Tina and Me

by charbrose

On the night of graduation, it was just Finn and Tina under the stars and 500 days later, it was still Finn and Tina, but they were more than they ever expected to be.

14. Chapter Twelve: You Feel So Far

~*~Chapter Twelve: Back At Home You Feel So Far~*~

Day 315

I miss you so bad/And my heart is so jet lagged

"Jet Lag" - by Simple Plan featuring Natasha Bedingfield -

Finn's POV -

Being back in Toledo totally sucked, but it's not like I could just flake on my finals and go to Palo Alto with Tina; that'd be crazy. And my Mom would skin me alive and then cut me up into little pieces. Sure, she loved Tina and stuff, but not enough to be cool with me skipping my finals to be with her, and it's not like she knew about the whole pregnancy scare thing.

Sighing, I tossed and turned in my bed hoping I'd fall asleep soon. If I was asleep, I wouldn't be thinking about how far away she was and how much I missed her.

Eventually after the five and the nine on my digital clock were replaced by zeros telling me it was one in the morning, my eyes grew heavy and I fell asleep. I was sound asleep when and having that awesome dream where Tina was the super sexy Asian version of Sydney Bristow from Alias and she got to walk around in tight fitting leather outfits when suddenly I felt something hard hit me right in the face.

"What the hell, man?" I demanded, darting into a sitting a position as I rubbed my face. "Did you, like, just hit me with your shoe?"

"I had to get your attention somehow, Hudson." My roommate Jake glowered. "Your fucking phone is ringing off the hook. Answer it before I decide kicking your ass is more important than sleeping for the rest of the night; it's fucking two in the morning, douche bag. Ugh."

I was still sort of half asleep and as I fumbled around the side table near my bed for my phone. I managed to catch it before I hit the ground and blinking at me over and over on the tiny screen was Tina.

Yawning, I stretched my arms over my head before hitting the connect button with my phone. I didn't get a chance to say anything because immediately she said, "I've been sexiled and I'm bored as hell sitting in the hallway of my dorm room like a loser; entertain me, Finn."

I was kinda slow when I was working on a full eight hours just waking up after, like, two hours asleep had me functioning even slower. "Um..." I mumbled, letting out another yawn. "What?"

She sighed on the other end of the phone. "I woke you up didn't I?" Her voice was small and soft sounding. "I'm sorry. Just forget it, okay? I can play Angry Birds until I finally fall asleep out here. Sure, I'll have horrible stinging neck pain from my body being propped up against a door from eight to ten hours, but it's better than trying to pretend Erica and her boyfriend Marcus aren't making the beast with two backs. Besides, I doubt I could refrain from screaming use a condom! Or maybe I'd scream the pill's only 99.9% affective and I should know!"

Her attempt at a joke fell flat and it made my stomach clench, which had me squirming. We hadn't talked about the scare since it happened and I knew she was still really freaked out by it.

Running my fingers through my hair, I bit the inside of my cheek as I climbed out of bed and padded across the hall to the dorm's bathroom. Shutting the door to the stall all the way at the end of the row, I leaned up against the wall and murmured, "I should have stopped and got a condom. I'm so sorry Tina. I'm, like, the worst fiancee ever."

Tears stung at my eyes as I remembered just how scared she had been and all the tears she had cried, and how she was never, ever supposed to cry. Blinking over and over, I scrubbed at my face with a closed fist, willing myself not to cry.

"Stop it." She insisted, her voice using that tone when she would insist to me that I was smart. "Haven't you ever heard, it takes two to tango, Finn? In case you've forgotten and I doubt you have, I was there too, remember?"

I felt like a jackass as my mind wandered back to the morning we woke up together after I had proposed. She was too beautiful for me to resist with her lightly curled hair spilling everywhere and looking like a halo around her head while her ivory skin glowed from the streams of sunlight that were coming through the window.

Hearing her tell me – her voice all breathless with need and raw with lust – that she wanted to feel all of me, really messed with my head, but I still should have been smarter and put on a condom. I wasn't Puck for fuck's sake!

But the way she was looking at me and how she kept grinding her hips against mine before grabbing my hand and pressing it against her sex so I could feel just how wet and ready she was, was too much.

"Are you done beating yourself up?" Her voice broke through my thoughts and I answered her honestly, "No. I don't think I ever will be either. I really could have messed everything up cause I couldn't handle you being all sexy and in charge and stuff. Puck's right; I am a major fail waiting to happen when it comes to sex. That's probably why he and Santana still call me Finnocence."

I didn't have to see her to know that she was rolling her eyes. "Puck's an idiot and Santana's a bitch to everyone who's not Brittany; don't listen to them. Like, I said, it takes two to tango. You didn't force me to do anything I didn't want. I was the one who kept telling you that I didn't want you to wear a condom."

"Yeah, but I was dumb enough to listen to you!"

"And you think Puck would have stopped to get a condom if Lauren told him to get one during sex? Because we both know he wouldn't. Just like if it was possible for Santana and Brittany to make ditzy girl babies with bitchy mouths during sex, she wouldn't stop to bother with a condom. You didn't do anything wrong."

"Yeah, I did." I whispered, my voice all raw and scratchy as I remembered how she was shaking and sobbing that day in her room. "If I had put on a condom, you wouldn't have cried. And don't you know, Tina? You're, like, never, eversupposed to cry. Crying's for Rachel who loves to be all dramatic about everything and Quinn who knows it'll get her whatever she wants. And you're not Rachel or Quinn. You're Tina who's always happy and bubbly and bright. Rachel may be on her way to becoming, like, the mega Broadway star she's always wanted, but you're the one who twinkles like a real star."

"I twinkle?" She whispered back and I knew her pretty eyes were wide and her perfect mouth was forming that o shape that always got my head spinning. "Are you serious? You really think I twinkle?"

Her awesome bubbly giggles were hidden in her voice and I imagined she had her hand covering her mouth as her ivory cheeks flushed while she shook her head, glossy hair dancing all around her shoulders. Her giggles came through the phone and not for the first time I wished I was in Palo Alto instead of Toledo. Or that she was here.

"You totally twinkle." I told her, laughing cause she was still giggling. "Trust me, okay? If anyone would know that you twinkle, it's me. I mean, I'm not looking at anybody else whenever we're together. Why would I?"

"It sucks that you're saying all those sweet things about me when you're so far away."

"I wish you were here. Or that I was there. Ugh, why isn't there a Stanford in Ohio?"

"Or a University of Toledo in California?"

"Yeah." I mumbled absently, picking at the threads of my old worn McKinley High Titans football T-shirt.

"If you were with me right now what do you think we'd be doing?" She asked, her voice so soft I wasn't sure she said anything.

"You mean while Erica sexiled you?" I couldn't stop myself from laughing.

"Shut up. It's not funny. Being stuck out here sucks, okay? And we'll see if you think it's so funny when it happens to you. Jake's going to bring a girl home before finals are over and then you'll be locked out of your dorm and when you call me whining about it, I'm going to laugh at you."

"It's a good thing I love the way you laugh then. And giggle too," I added as I felt my lips curve upward. "And when you pout and tilt your head when you're trying to figure stuff out and your smile. I just – you know – love you, Tina."

"None of our friends would believe me if I ever told them this, but you know all the right things to say, Finn Hudson. Don't ever stop doing that, okay? Cause as much as being so far away sucks, if you stopped saying all the right things and all the sweet things, that would really suck."

"I'll never stop. How else am I going to stay married to you?"

"We're not married yet, you dork."

"Whatever. We'll be married soon."

"We will, huh?" Her voice was all dreamy and breathless and I felt my stomach clench as a shiver raced up my spine.

I didn't know how long soon was and she probably didn't either, but I wished soon could be, like, tomorrow. I thought I had wanted to be with Rachel so badly and then when Quinn and I tried again, I thought she was what I wanted and I twisted myself in knots to try and be her perfect "Prom King boyfriend," but I didn't want either of them as badly as I wanted Tina to be here with me or to be where she was.

"After finals are over and we're back in Lima we should just, like, go and elope or whatever."

"You're lack of sleep is obviously getting to you. Eloping would be impossible. I would need Mercedes and Kurt to be there and you – ugh – would need Puck who is so whipped that he would have to bring Lauren. And how exactly would we make sure that Kurt and Mercedes keep this elopement a secret? They're my best friends and I love them, but they have the biggest mouths in Lima. I should know, I used to gossip with them about everything. And do you really think they're not going to tell Mike and Blaine? And if Mike knows that's almost the same as my parents knowing. I mean what's he going to do? Lie to his parents and say he and Mercedes got married?"

"I still say we could totally pull it off."

"Because we're both such amazing liars." She huffed and I knew she was rolling her eyes.

"I don't want to elope. I want a wedding with the dress and you in a tux and a cake and doing all the traditional something borrowed, something old, something new, something blue stuff and tossing the bouquet and the garter. Don't you want that too? You know, like, what Mr. Schue and Miss Pillsbury had?"

"I want whatever you want. But, like, mostly I just want to marry you."

"I know what we'd be doing if you were here with me." She whispered.

"You do?" I blinked totally forgetting that she had asked me what I thought we'd be doing if I was with her.

"Kissing. We'd be kissing because you did it again; you said the right thing. How is it," She laughed and I closed my eyes; imagining her brown eyes being bright and shimmering as her pink lips twisted into her beaming smile. "That you can be so adorably clueless and so smart at the same time?"

"Just lucky that way I guess." I shrugged.

"It's late." She observed, sadness creeping into her voice. "Good luck with your finals. Remember that you are smart, okay?"

"I'd say good luck too but you're the brainiac."

"Goodnight." The sadness was all there this time and my stomach got tight while my heart clenched.

I knew how she felt; I didn't want to say goodbye either. I wanted to stay on the phone with her, but we couldn't do that. I thought about singing to her or asking her to sing to me, but that would only make missing her worse.

(I miss you so bad

I wanna share your horizon

I miss you so bad

And see the same sun rising

I miss you so bad

Turn the hour hand back to when you were holding me.) ("Jet Lag" by Simple Plan featuring Natasha Bedingfield)

"Night, Tina." I whispered hoarsely. "Don't, um, like let the bed bugs bite and stuff."

"I love you." A little bit of laughter broke through the sadness and that made me smile.

"I love you too."

(You say good morning when it's midnight

Going out of my head

Alone in this bed

I wake up to your sunset

And it's driving me mad

I miss you so bad

And my heart is so jetlagged

Heart, heart, heart is so jetlagged

Heart, heart, heart is so jetlagged)

Song used "Jet Lag" by Simple Plan featuring Natasha Bedingfield