Chapter 21.
A/N:
So I decided to compromise and post the prologue to the other fic, but I'm going to wait until I wrap this one up before I start adding more chapters :)
The song Finn hears on the radio is Damien Rice's Cannonball.
...
The end of October. (2 weeks later).
Finn took a small sip of the beer that was in one hand and stared at the small screen of his cell phone that was in the other. He was just drinking enough to get buzzed.
After his night with Rachel, he really had intended to sober up for good. But then when she had crushed him like the hand of God the day after (he sometimes missed Artie and his way of wording things) he hadn't been able to stop himself from relapsing. Luckily, the memories of the good night were shining just enough of a bright light on him to prevent him from fully jumping off the wagon, but he wasn't about to deny the comforting warmth a couple drinks a night brought him when he felt so shitty.
He was actually surprised at how well he was managing, all things considered. Rachel had told him that she couldn't be with him because she didn't want to become a 'hollow piece of nothingness'. What she hadn't told him was that that was what he got to look forward to after she walked out of his hotel room for good. Because that phrase summed up his current state of mind perfectly.
Filming for Wicked had finished the previous day and he was sitting alone at the bar in the intimate night club that the cast and crew were having their wrap party at. Rachel hadn't shown.
When production for the film had first gotten going, he and Rachel had been friends with a lot of the people that were now having fun around him. But they had pretty much ostracized themselves after all the drama between them started, and so now he really didn't know how to rejoin the friendly group of cast and crew without feeling totally awkward and lame.
And even though he hadn't shown up to set drunk again during the past 2 weeks (although he definitely had reason to), he still felt pretty embarrassed about how he had handled himself in front of these members of the industry during his dark period.
His head fell back down to his phone. He had texted her to ask if she was coming to the party when he hadn't seen her an hour in. He had really wanted to say goodbye you know? Even after all the stilted conversations and awkward interactions of the past couple weeks, he had just wanted to see her one last time. To try to convince himself that it all really was for the best.
Her curt 'no' in response had led to him to stupidly, in an 11th hour desperate last attempt, ask her one final time:
Finn: why do you have to be like this? why does it have to be this way?
(he still had a problem with word vomit).
Her extensive response glared at him from the digital screen in front of him.
Rachel: Apparently you're too weak to understand that I'm doing us both a favor. We're just plain bad for each other. If Glee club had never started and you had stuck to throwing eggs at me in high school, you wouldn't have an alcohol abuse problem now and I wouldn't have a serious mood disorder. In short, we'd both be a lot better off and healthier happier people. Hopefully it's not too late to regain a chance at normalcy, but I do know that that won't happen if we get back together. I'm not trying to hurt you, I'm trying to help you, to help us. Just accept that, so we can try to start leading separate, and therefor normal, lives.
He hadn't replied for fifteen minutes, just re-read the message over and over. Something about it was bothering him, something about it was so un-Rachel.
And then it was like a lightbulb clicked on in his head. He typed his response.
Finn: since when did you ever want to be normal?
She never replied.
...
Since when did you ever want to be normal?
Finn's words, Finn's voice, echoed in her head.
He was right. She had always been proud of being different, it had made her special. But being different hadn't always made her happy.
Maybe normality's isn't over-rated, maybe being normal makes people happy, and that's what all the fuss is about.
She just didn't know anymore.
She sat on her bed combing her fingers through her hair mindlessly, staring at her dark room, she couldn't fall asleep.
She had accepted Jay Baker's offer right after she had left Finn's hotel room two weeks earlier. In a few months, she'd be packing up her life, and leaving everything she had ever known to move continents. She'd be in London for four years.
...
(The next morning).
Finn groaned and rolled over on his stomach as an incessant buzzing filled his head. He hadn't had that much to drink, had he?
It took him another second to realize it was his phone. He blindly moved his hand to feel the contents on his bedside table, before it finally rested on the little ringing device.
"Hello?" he answered hoarsely.
"It's me," Kurt's high pitched voice rang through the phone, "I'm picking you up in half an hour so get ready. Oh and pack an overnight bag."
"What are you talking about?" Finn asked, it was too early for this.
"We have a noon flight to Lima to catch."
That woke Finn right up.
"What?" he cried outraged, "Why would you buy me a ticket to the last place on earth I want to go to without talking to me about it first."
"Because your mom and I are staging an intervention. And a key facet of the definition of 'intervention' is the element of surprise."
Finn scowled.
"But I'm fine. I thought I was taking this all pretty well. You don't see me overdosing on sleeping pills do you?"
Kurt made a little tut tut noise on the other end of the line.
"No but I happen to know for a fact that you're still consuming excessive amounts of lethal-liver liquids, and although it's not nearly at the dangerous level it was a month ago, it's still time something was done about that."
Finn huffed.
"I'm 23 years old Kurt, which, in case you weren't aware, means I'm an adult who can handle himself and is also legally allowed to drink. And you have no idea how much my alcohol intake has reduced from a month ago so forgive me for being a little pissed at the fact that you think you have the right to force me back to a town I never want to revisit again."
Kurt's voice softened a little.
"Okay maybe I should have tried a less aggressive approach to this coercion, but just do this for Carol okay? She misses you like you wouldn't believe, and your lifestyle choices are stressing her out so much she just might have a heart attack. How would that make you feel Finn, if you single-handedly killed your mother with worry?"
Finn sighed glumly, the anger dissipating and becoming replaced with guilt.
"It'd make me feel just as shitty as I already do. In case you haven't noticed, I'm no stranger to ruining the lives of people I love."
"Jesus Finn stop with the melodramatics already, you sound like Rachel. There is more to life than moping around feeling sorry for yourself just because you're one true love refuses to have anything to do with you! I'm picking you up in half an hour whether you like it or not."
Finn heard the click signaling that Kurt had hung up on him.
...
Rachel was having an extremely hard time giving her A game at the matinee show. She hadn't gotten any sleep the night before and her performance was suffering greatly from it. She had actually yawned while singing one number, and embarrassingly tripped during one of the dances.
It was intermission and she was doing jumping jacks in her dressing room to try to get the energy pumping.
Was this her body notifying her that she wasn't subconsciously okay with leaving everything behind to move across an ocean.
She was still battered from everything that had gone on between her and Finn. But she wasn't high-strung, uber-motivated and self disciplined Rachel Berry for nothing. She thought she had been handling the whole situation pretty well all things considered. Yeah, she randomly broke down in sobs from time to time for no 'apparent' reason, but she had effectively stopped thinking about him (at least on the outer parts of her psyche).
So this all had to do with the fact that she would uprooting her life sometime in the near future to semi-permanently live in Europe.
Was she really ready to start over from scratch?
Yes. She kept telling herself. It'd be the perfect antidote to everything that was wrong in her life, her real chance at normality.
So why does it feel like I'm running away?
...
9 hours later he was driving to his mom's house from his hotel in Dayton. Kurt could be extremely persuasive and forceful when he needed to be. But Finn had agreed to come on the condition that he didn't have to stay in Lima (or god forbid his old room in their house), so now he was making the tedious, cornfield littered drive to his hometown.
Kurt had gone ahead and was already setting up the first part of their 'intervention' with Carol. Apparently they had to have a sit down, and he was expected to tell them everything that had happened to him since graduating high school, that had made him descend to this personal low. He wasn't looking forward to it one bit, but he figured he'd try it, and if it made his mom feel better, why not. It's not like he had anything better to do besides wallow in his own self-loathing.
He began to switch through the radio channels in his rental car. The stations were all totally unfamiliar to him. Ohio really was no longer his home.
The low soft instrumentals of a mellow song began to emit from 102.9 and it seemed to fit his mood, so he decided to keep the dial there.
There's still a little bit of your taste in my mouth
There's still a little bit of you laced with my doubt
It's still a little hard to say what's going on
Wow.. Creepy much? The guy singing on the radio was basically voicing his own thoughts about Rachel.
There's still a little bit of your ghost your witness
There's still a little bit of your face i haven't kissed
You step a little closer each day
That I can´t say what´s going on
Stones taught me to fly
Love, it taught me to lie
Life, it taught me to die
So it's not hard to fall
When you float like a cannonball
There's still a little bit of your song in my ear
There's still a little bit of your words i long to hear
You step a little closer to me
So close that I can´t see what´s going on
What the fuck was this? God's ironic comment to him? The universe telling him that he wasn't the only one to suffer in the name of fucked up love?
Stones taught me to fly
Love taught me to lie
Life taught me to die
So its not hard to fall
When you float like a cannon.
And the stupid tears were officially starting to fall. He was a dude for God's sake, why did he keep crying so much?
Stones taught me to fly
Love, it taught me to cry
So come on courage, teach me to be shy
'Cause its not hard to fall,
And I don't want to scare her
Its not hard to fall
And I don't want to lose
Its not hard to grow
When you know that you just don't know
This place was just out to get him.