Rachel had yet to see any of the homes of the students that she went to school with. Although she went to a boarding school, most of her classmates had parents who lived in the Manhattan area, spending money simply to have their kids go to a prestigious school and to get them out of the house for nine months out of the year.
She often wondered if their homes were as extravagant and as lavish as the dorm rooms, especially since they all dotted the Upper East Side and overlooked the New York skyline.
They were the kinds of apartments she dreamed of living in when she was twenty five and had established a career for herself already. Rachel had always been the girl who didn't need a man to follow around dotingly or confine herself to a wedding ring. She was too independent for something like a husband, especially with the career path she would be taking.
Maybe she would be able to distract herself from whatever Finn wanted to tell her by looking at the penthouse apartments on his street and admiring however his mother had decorated her home upon getting inside. She had only suggested going to his house because she knew that it was nearby and she wanted a change in location. The dorms got stuffy and confining over a while and if Finn was actually going to talk to her, she wanted to be able to listen to him without being distracted.
Well, she would listen to him if she actually wanted to. Rachel still wasn't sure about that quite yet.
Finn walked down the street and Rachel followed behind him, eyes wandering and looking everywhere but at him. It wasn't a very long walk to wherever Finn lived from the school campus, but it wasn't the warmest outside. October had greeted New York with blustering winds and a drop in temperature, particularly when the sun had set. The winds whipped past the skyscrapers and sent a chill down Rachel's spine, causing her to cross her arms over her chest to keep herself warm.
Finn turned the corner and noticed her walking behind him, teeth chattering as the wind picked up her hair and made it start to dance. He shifted around and pulled his jacket from his arms, stopping in front of the building under the awning that covered the entryway, Rachel coming to a halt behind him.
"You can wear my coat, if you want," he said, offering her the blazer. Finn had ran to the party in a hurry and the only jacket he could find was his blazer of his uniform, but it looked rather nice when it wasn't paired with the rest of his uniform.
Rachel had worn it before in his room and would wear it sometimes when it was too cold and they walked outside together. She eyed the jacket and sighed, unfolding her arms and placing them at her sides.
"I'm not cold," she managed to spit out, despite her teeth chattering together. "It's just not as warm as it was when I left for the party, that's all." Finn rolled his eyes and stifled a laugh, clucking his tongue as he looked at her.
"Look, Rachel, it's cold, okay? You don't have to like me to wear my jacket if you're freezing."
She looked up at him through her lashes and extended her arm out, grabbing the blazer in Finn's hand and pulled it on, her small frame drowning in the jacket.
Rachel wasn't going to show Finn that she still had feelings for him. She was supposed to feel closure and become this independent woman again, wasn't she?
Finn led her down one more block until they reached a large apartment building, ringing a bell on the side to allow them access. In no time at all the doors were unlocked and Finn walked inside, Rachel swinging the revolving door and walking through the circle until the entered the lobby, following Finn into the elevator. He pressed his finger against the button labeled 'P' for penthouse and the doors sealed shut, the car slowly beginning to rise up the many floors to wherever it was that he lived.
Rachel clicked her heels together nervously, looking down at her shoes. She sighed, snuggling into the blazer that Finn had leant her. She wouldn't make it extremely obvious, but she missed the musky smell of Finn that was left in the fabric of the blazer that he let her wear. He managed to smell like Axe cologne and cigarettes and some fruity shampoo all at the same time, and she missed it. She missed how her sheets would smell like him when he would go to her dorm and how his kisses tasted like cigarettes sometimes.
"You know, you can start explaining everything now," she said, her head still tipped down to the ground. "I'd… I'd like to hear what you have to say, Finn." She didn't really. Rachel wasn't interested in hearing about how much Finn and Quinn must have discussed how ugly she was and how much of a chore it must have been to do so much as kiss her. Rachel thought that placing bets about sleeping with people was something that was left in storybooks and horror stories from teen magazines. She never would have thought that someone would have plotted out a similar bet at her expense.
Finn sighed and looked at her, still unwilling to look back at him. "Don't you want to get inside first?" He asked, the elevator pinging and the doors opening in front of them. Rachel rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest once more, her heart beating erratically. "It's warmer inside, I promise."
"Isn't this exactly how you treated me when we first met?" She asked bitterly, pushing her hair from eyes for a moment. "Wanting to bring me back home with you just so you could win your stupid little bet and have sex with me?"
Finn walked further into the hall and Rachel followed after him, the lights turning on the further he walked inside. The living room of his house was large and spacious; floor to ceiling windows putting the New York skyline on display in front of them, the furniture looking like it cost more than what her entire college tuition would cost. There wasn't anyone home; explaining why Finn had accepted her idea of going back to his house.
"Wow," she mouthed silently, eyes wandering around the room. She didn't want to say anything else to have Finn's mind stray from the topic it was on, but the house was truly beautiful. She wondered why he would ever choose to live in a dorm on campus rather than here, in a penthouse that she could only assume was more beautiful the longer she spent inside.
"Rachel, I don't know what else to tell you," he said, running a hand through his hair nervously. "I mean, I don't know how to let you know how badly I feel about everything, and I-"
"You could apologize," she said, her voice loud and cutting about his own as she interrupted him. Finn's eyes grew large and he looked at her, watching as she stood in front of the couch, tears beginning to pique at her eyes. "You haven't spent any time apologizing to me about any of this."
He wished that their relationship was still intact so that he would be able to run up to her and hold her; stroking her hair and reassuring her that everything was going to be alright.
Of course, it wouldn't be very fitting due to the fact that she was upset with him.
"I trusted you, Finn," she continued, turning her back to face him. "I trusted you and I kept on telling myself that you were so much more different than the rest of the guys here, and I thought you were." She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, promising herself that she wasn't going to start crying again. "And you were, for a while." She laughed bitterly to herself and crossed her arms over her chest, looking down at the floor. "You loved me and I loved you and all I wanted was to be with you." Her voice caught on a sob and she shook her head, sighing. "My mistake, I guess."
Finn watched her as she stood in the corner by herself, hugging herself and holding onto the jacket he had let her wear like it was some kind of lifeline.
"Rachel, I'm sorry," he told her, feeling like he was about to cry himself. Finn was sure that he hadn't cried since he was in the eighth grade and broke his arm, but that was about something completely different. He had never cried over a girl, and never like this. He knew guys who cried about girls who wouldn't sleep with them or whatever, but those guys were pansies to begin with.
He felt like crying because of Rachel and how badly he felt about what he had done to her. She didn't deserve anything that he had done to her, and it killed him.
The best way to make her feel better, however (if there even was a way to make her feel better) was to tell her the truth.
"When you first got here, Quinn made this big deal about finding everything out about you so she could mess with you," he started, swallowing his pride. Rachel looked up at him, tears welling in her eyes. "Like, she told me that she wanted to spend a bunch of time with you or whatever just so she could find out what made you tick."
Rachel's mouth fell open and she gasped, unable to say anything.
"And so when she found out that you hadn't… done it yet, she made the bet with me." He could hear Rachel sniffling and she sat on the arm of the couch, her arms covered up by the sleeves of his blazer. "She said that if I slept with you by the time the school year was over, that I got to sleep with her, and if I didn't, she got to keep my car."
Rachel swallowed her tears and her face pinched up like it always did when she cried. She tried everything in her power to regain her composure in front of him. She didn't want to look like the victim in all of this, even though she was.
"So you bet sleeping with me against your car," she said through her teeth. "I'm worth that much to you."
"No," Finn said, rushing up to her and letting his hand rest against her back. Surprisingly enough to him, she didn't flinch or shrug her shoulders away when he touched her. He could feel her labored breathing and how her body raised and fell each time she tried to keep herself from completely breaking down into a pool of tears. "No, Rachel, it's not like that at all." She wiped her tears from her eyes and sighed, a shaking hand moving up to her face to brush her hair from her eyes.
"But it sounds like that," she told him, turning to look at him. Finn felt his heart wanting to pop inside his chest as he noticed her face and how broken she was; mascara running down her face and her expression tired and sad. He hadn't seen her happy and smiling in the longest time. That might have been what killed him the most.
He turned around and knelt on the floor in front of her, wanting to reach for Rachel's hands just have something of hers in his hands once more. "Rachel, I've been in love with you since the first time I saw you," he confessed, taking her by the hand. Rachel refused to look up from her lap at him, a hand pressed to her face and shaking her head from side to side. "The entire time I was with you, I was never really thinking about that stupid bet, or Quinn, or whatever." He sighed and moved a hand up to brush her hair from her face, causing Rachel to prop her head up to look at him. "All I could think about was how great you were, and how bad I felt for doing what I was doing to you."
She bit down on her lip and looked at Finn, her tears stopping. "And I still love you, Rachel," Finn told her, fixing her hair and wiping her stained makeup with her face with his thumb. "I think I'll always love you."
Rachel sniffled and looked at Finn, swallowing thickly as he touched her. She snuggled herself further into his jacket and moved her own hand up to touch his face, tipping her head to the side slightly.
"I've never been so in love with someone before you, Finn," she said, her voice soft like she was telling a secret. "And it… it killed me to find out about you and everything, and it just…" Her voice broke off, her eyes looking up as she searched for something else to say to him. "I needed to know if anything that happened between us was real. Because it was for me."
Finn nodded and felt tears begin to start flowing behind his eyes, but he wouldn't let her see him cry. He never cried, ever. "I love you so much, Rachel," he told her lovingly, fingers playing with her hair absentmindedly. "And all I ever want to do is keep on loving you."
She giggled sadly and practically fell into his arms, drowning in his jacket and beginning to pepper his face with kisses, Finn's arms finding purchase on her waist and holding her close to him. She found his lips and kissed him fiercely, only wanting to feel him and taste him and smell him, and nothing else. She continued to cry, her tears running onto his face as she held him close to her. Finn pulled away from her for a moment, confused.
"You're crying?"
She giggled, wiping her tears from her eyes. "I'm happy," she reassured him, bringing a hand up to his face once more. "I'm happy for you, and I'm happy for me… I'm happy for us."
Finn laughed and picked her up in his arms, spinning her around while he had her up in the air. She looked down at him and smiled, legs wrapping around him while giving precaution not to stab him in the sides with her heels while doing so.
He set her down on the couch and she laid down across it, Finn hovering over her. She pulled him in for one last kiss, tugging on his lip before he pulled away from her.
"I'm ready," she told him, her voice still quiet. Finn felt his heart beat faster as he looked at her lying beneath him; rubbing her knees together and biting down on her lip, teasing him without knowing that she was teasing him.
He looked at her, puzzled. "Why would you want to do it now?" He asked, stroking her cheek gently as he looked at her. "It's on my living room couch. I thought you wanted it to be special."
Rachel moved her own hand up to cover his, laughing sweetly. "It is going to be special," she told him, looking up at him with heavy eyes. "I'm going to give you something that no one else is ever going to get."
Finn looked at her and pressed a kiss to her forehead, making her nose wrinkle when she smiled at him. She felt his hands ease onto the jacket he had given her moments earlier and peeled it off of her figure, throwing it to the ground. Rachel fidgeted around on the couch beneath him and kicked her shoes off as best as she could; quickly realizing that Finn was much more skilled in the removal of clothing in a small amount of time than she was.
Her fingers played with the hem of his shirt and she looked at him like he had just sold her the world, hands daring to venture up under the fabric to feel the definition of muscle on his stomach. She gasped softly in awe and he sat up for a moment, pulling the shirt over his head. Rachel's hands found purchase on his chest as he lowered himself back down to her, kissing her neck and nibbling on her ear.
They were silent save for the heavy breathing between the two of them; Finn in too much shock to say anything and Rachel so worried that she would do something wrong that she stayed silent. Her heart stammered and she sat up, feeling Finn's hands move around to her back to unzip the dress he had admired so.
She shuddered as she could feel him peeling the fabric away from her body, although wasn't as nervous as she had anticipated herself to be. Finn had already seen her naked before, she just hadn't seen him. That was part of what frightened her so much about having sex; that moment when her clothes finally came off would either make someone even more anticipated to do the deed or leave them with a bad taste in their mouth over what she looked like once she was standing and wearing nothing but her dignity.
"S'beautiful," Finn gasped, admiring her figure upon peeling her dress from her shoulders. She hadn't bothered to wear a bra with the dress she had picked out for the evening, making him that much more surprised when he had gotten the garment around her ankles. Rachel blushed fervently and ducked her head down, trying to catch her breath. Finn smiled and tipped her head up with his finger, causing her to smile. He kissed her sweetly and she kissed him back, pushing herself down on top of him.
"I want to be on top this time," she told him, her voice soft and scratchy. Finn just looked at her, surprised.
"But we're not going to do what we did last-"
"I never said I wanted to do that," she told him, trying to sound as sexy as she could, still coming out as sounding as innocent as ever. She slid down his body and kissed his chest, short fingernails digging into his skin and making Finn feel like he was going to explode. She smiled and sat up on his lap, straddling his hips. "I want to show you how much I love you," she told him, hands fumbling with his belt buckle. "I want to touch you like how you touched me." She undid his belt and began working at the button of his pants, deftly undoing the zipper and sliding them down his legs. Her hands ghosted over the space between his legs over his boxers and she could feel him tenting them with his arousal, moving her hands away from him quickly.
She looked down at him, eyes wide. She had never felt so vulnerable and exposed before, and it wasn't even her that was in submission at the moment. She felt his touch her hands and she smiled at him sweetly, moving her hands and trying her best to tug his boxers down his hips without breaking out into tears.
It wasn't like she was even performing some fantastic gesture of love, anyway. She just wanted to reciprocate what he had done for her earlier.
She dipped her head down between his legs and could feel Finn's labored breathing synchronize with her own. She had never given anyone a blowjob before, but she had done her research – reading Brittany's copies of Cosmopolitan had obvious paid off in some way. She tried to run through all of the pointers the magazine had given her, licking her lips slowly and looking up at Finn through her dark eyelashes.
Her eyes remained trained on the length of him, wrapping her small hand around him and beginning to pump at him slowly, biting down on her lip subconsciously.
(If she only knew how crazy she drove Finn every time she bit down on her lip like that, then she would know that doing it at the moment was a horrible idea.)
"Rachel," he groaned, making her afraid that she would clench her hands around him and hurt him. She giggled sweetly and ducked her head further down between his legs, letting her jaw hang loose and darting her tongue out in front of him, licking him from base to tip. Finn felt a chill go down his spine and Rachel figured that it was a good thing, pressing a kiss to the head of his cock, letting her tongue slip out before pulling her lips away.
Finn felt his blood begin to boil as she pulled her mouth away from him, her hand still firmly clasped around the length of him. She looked down at him, almost looking like she was afraid.
"Was… was that okay?"
Finn's eyes nearly rolled into the back of his head as he sat up and grabbed Rachel by the waist. "Yes," he blurted, his voice sounding about three decibels higher than he wanted it to. "I m-mean, um, yeah, baby. You're perfect."
Rachel ducked her head back between his legs and smiled after she had been praised for her ministrations and continued, taking Finn into her mouth eagerly and starting to suck lightly, afraid that she would hurt him if she went into everything too quickly. Finn tipped his head back and let his fingers root through her hair, urging her to continue what she was doing.
She pumped her hands around him and took as much of his cock into her mouth as she could, humming as she did so. (That's what it told her to do in the magazine, so she followed it like it was her bible.) She watched as Finn leaned back on the bed and continued to push her head between his legs, fingers threaded through her hair. She could feel his breathing becoming more labored and swore she could feel his heart beat in tandem with her own, only causing her to intensify what she was doing.
Finn sat up quickly and caused Rachel to release him from her mouth with an audible pop, looking up at him with a worried expression on her face. He crawled over to her on his knees, knowing that the image of Rachel Berry on her hands and knees wearing nothing but a skimpy pair of underwear would be burned into the back of his head for eternity.
"Did I do something wrong?" She asked innocently, sitting up so that she was on her knees. Finn joined her and grabbed her by the neck, kissing her fiercely. He bit down on her lip and tugged at it slightly as he pulled away from her, a hand rooted in her hair.
"No," he told her, pressing kisses to her jawline. "You're perfect, baby girl." She kissed him back and let her hands rest on his shoulders, looking at him sweetly. "I just didn't want to… you know. Lose it there."
She lay back down on the couch without a word, bringing Finn back with her so that he lay on top of her, his hands finding purchase on her hips. He kissed her on the jaw and around her ear, hands mussing through her hair.
"I love you so much, Rachel," he whispered in her ear, holding her as close to him as she could. "So, so much." She giggled and drew him as close to her as she could, feeling his fingers hook in the elastic of her underwear as he started to pull them down her legs. She didn't shiver or move her hands down to stop him this time; hitching her legs up around his waist once the garment reached her ankles.
Finn looked down at her and started to labor his breathing once more, adjusting himself so that he would be able to thrust into her without a problem. Rachel looked back up at him, biting down on her lip before bringing a hand up to caress him neck.
"I love you too," she told him, her voice soft. "I love you so much."
Finn bent down to press a kiss to her lips and then her jaw, peppering kisses down her neck and chest as he thrust into her. She gasped and bucked up off of the couch slightly upon first feeling him slide into her, her face pinching like it normally did when she cried.
He pulled out of her quickly and looked at her, searching for her signs of pain. "Rach, are you okay?"
She nodded slowly, letting her eyes open so she could look at him. "Yes," she said, voice soft and broken. "Just… I just… I need you, Finn. All of you."
Finn touched Rachel's cheek with his thumb and bent back down to kiss her again, shifting around until he was able to thrust into her again. Rachel mewled softly and dug her nails into his strong, broad back, feeling helpless underneath him. The pain she felt slowly started to turn into bliss; her lips able to crash into his as he continued.
She looked in his eyes and felt Finn's breathing intensify, watching as he looked down at her. He was moving at such a glacial pace that it made her want him even more; letting her relish in every moment they had with one another.
He pulled out of her quickly and looked at her, out of breath. Rachel furrowed her brow and looked at him from her position on the couch, still sore from moments earlier.
"Are you alright?"
He looked at her, unsure of what to say. "I need to…"
She already knew what he wanted and sat up further on the couch, motioning for him to come closer. "Come here," she said, watching as Finn walked towards her. She had read about this in Cosmo and figured that it would be somewhat romantic, even if it was supposed to be a special moment between them.
Her lips wrapped around his cock once more and she let her free hand clamp around him again, sucking at him and pumping her hand until Finn was able to release himself, Rachel milking him for all he was worth. She looked up at him and swallowed, making a face slightly as she looked at him.
Finn just looked down at Rachel, unsure of what to say.
"Rachel, you didn't have to-"
"It's fine," she told him, standing up and walking towards him, a small smile on her face. "I… I kind of wanted to, anyway." Finn smiled at her and she giggled, wiping the sheen of sweat that had begun to collect on her brow.
Finn grabbed her by the waist and pulled her down on the couch, grabbing the blanket that was draped over the back and spreading it out so that it covered both of their naked frames, Rachel snuggling into his chest.
"This means that you'll never let me go, right?" She asked, her eyes falling shut as she found his hand beneath the blanket. Finn smiled and rested his chin on her head, burrowing his nose in her hair and kissing her on the top of the head.
"I never want to let you go," he told her, holding her as close to her as he possibly could. He gave her hand a squeeze and she giggled, her neck craning up so she could nuzzle his own. "I promise, Rachel. I love you too much to ever lose you."
She smiled and rested her head against his chest once more, sighing deeply.
"I love you too," she assured him, her voice scratchy and echoing in the large living room. "I love you so much, Finn."