Title: Backstory, Part 3 of 6
Author: Depudor
Email: depudor@hotmail.com
Category: Finn/Other
Rating: R
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Steven Antin and Columbia/Tristar Television. No infringement intended.
Summary: This is a Finn/Kate fic that is a quasi-sequel to 'The Best Christmas Ever' and begins one month after the events in that story. The main storyline is interspersed with flashback/backstory scenes that start with the episode Kiss & Tell and then go backwards in time from there. So the flashbacks are in reverse order, with the earliest flashback coming last. Make sense? Hopefully it will.
Notes: The song "Breakin' Me" by Johnny Lang is somewhat key to this story, but it's from the show, so if you've got tapes you don't need to download anything off of Napster (although you should, because it's a great song). Just check out the first Kate/Finn scene in Kiss & Tell, the kissing scene that's interrupted by Ryder. The other song is "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen -- the music is not important to the story, but it's a brilliant and beautiful song. And when I checked the lyrics on the Web, the site said "Related Artists: Nick Drake." So there you go. A YA connection and I didn't even know it.
Thanks: To Debi for her laborious hours spent helping me fine-tune this, to Sue and wonka for their input, and with a special dedication and much love to all you teachers out there!
Feedback: Always appreciated. Thank you! __________________________________________________________________________________
The next morning, Hamilton and Jake walked up to Finn's desk after class. They chatted casually until the last of the other students cleared out, and then Hamilton said in a hushed voice, "Finn, thanks for getting my mom out of there last night."
"Yeah, thanks," Jake added.
Finn looked from one to the other carefully. "Hamilton, have you thought about telling your mother the truth?"
"About Jake?" Hamilton furrowed his brow and looked at his girlfriend. She looked nervously at Finn.
"Yeah, about Jake."
"Why would I do that?"
"Because you and your mother have always been so close, and now there's something really important in your life that you're not sharing with her."
Hamilton shrugged. "But if I tell her, she'll have to tell my dad."
"I don't think she will. You don't give your mother enough credit. She's a pretty open-minded person."
"But she doesn't keep secrets from my dad."
"Well, um, in this case she might. I think she'd be sympathetic to Jake's situation. Your mother was kind of a rebel in college, had some problems with her own parents. She might just understand."
Hamilton looked at Jake for a long moment, then looked back at Finn and shook his head. "I don't want to take the chance. But I'll think about what you said, Finn." He took Jake's hand and squeezed it. They walked hand-in-hand to the doorway, then stepped away from each other as they walked out into the hall.
-
That afternoon, after his last class, Finn made his way back to his dormitory apartment.
"Finn..."
He stopped in front of his door and turned as he heard Kate's voice. He was relieved to see her. And nervous. And excited. He hadn't thought she'd be ready to talk this soon.
"Hi," he said as he slid his key into the lock.
"Do you have a minute?"
"Just a minute?"
She smiled. "Maybe a bit more. I have a lot I want to... say."
Finn opened his door, and Kate stepped in ahead of him.
"Finn!" another voice called. He turned to see Will jogging toward him down the hall.
"Mr. Krudski, I'm kind of in the middle of..."
Will stopped in front of the door and looked at Kate.
"Hi, Will," she said nervously. She cast her eyes at the floor.
Will looked back at Finn. Something registered in his eyes as he saw his mentor with the Dean's wife again. Finn knew what it was. Will looked crestfallen.
"What can I do for you?" Finn asked.
"I... I have a first draft of my story. I wanted you to look at it." Will looked down sheepishly at the pages he clutched in his hands.
"I'll give it a look," Finn replied. "And talk to you later." He took the pages.
"You know what?" Kate said, stepping back out into the hallway. "I have to get on home and start dinner. Finn, you and I can talk tomorrow."
Finn closed his eyes and held back a frustrated sigh. "OK."
She smiled at Will and took off down the hallway like her skirt was on fire.
Finn looked at his young disciple. "OK, Will, why don't you come on in?"
They went into the apartment, and Finn set the story down on his desk as Will closed the door.
"So that's what's going on?" said Will. "I thought you said that was over."
"What?"
Will rolled his eyes. "You know. You're still after Hamilton's mother."
"Kate and I are very good friends."
"I wish I had more friends like that."
Finn crossed his arms. "I don't like the tone you're taking with me. We may be friends, Will, but I'm still your teacher."
"I don't know what to say, Finn. You know how much I respect you, but... Hamilton... I don't want him to get hurt."
"I don't either. He's a friend of mine, too."
"Is this how you treat your friends? By sleeping with their mothers?"
"This is complicated."
"It's not complicated. It's wrong."
"Ah, the innocence of youth. So easy to see things clearly, in black and white, isn't it? Enjoy that while you've got it."
"I hope I never lose the ability to tell right from wrong."
"Women will do that to you. And I've had a lot of relationships, so I know a good deal more about this subject matter than you do."
"So if you're such an expert on women, why can't you find one who isn't married? I thought you and Ms. Wood had something going on."
"That didn't work out."
"Why not?"
"You don't just pick someone to fall in love with, Will. You can't make it happen, and when it does, you can't make it go away. And once you get inside, the lights shut off, and you can't find your way out."
"So you just give up and go with it, no matter who gets hurt? You just stop thinking?"
"That's what love does, Will. It makes you stupid. It makes you weak. Love makes you frozen in place, so that even when you realize that you can't get the girl, you just can't make yourself move on, find a new job, leave. You're rooted to the spot where she is."
"That's what you say now, but you still have choices! You always tell me that, that I don't have to let life happen to me, that I can make it happen."
Finn sighed in frustration, trying not to get too defensive. "You don't understand."
"Then explain it to me!"
"If I could explain it..." Finn looked over at the crumpled pages on his desk. His gaze traveled around the room at the books that lined the numerous shelves and then landed on a copy of D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. He squinted as his eyes rested again on his student.
"So, what are you in it for, Will?"
"What?"
"Why do you read? Why do you write?"
"What do you mean?"
"Is this just about getting an education, improving yourself? Because don't worry, you'll do that. You'll know all the important authors, read all the right books. You'll bury your townie roots. You'll learn all the big words, ace the SATs and get into a top college. If that's what you're looking for." He pointed at his bookshelves. "But that's not what these books are here for. Ultimately, the purpose of reading great literature is to understand humanity, as best we can try, to open up and explore the human heart and its unfathomable capacity for love -- love beyond practicality or rationality, beyond any notion of right and wrong, even to the point of self-destruction." He paused to catch his breath, glaring at Will, who stared defiantly back at him. "So when you're done here at Rawley, after all the reading, after all the studying, all the term papers, and all the tests, if you can tell me why I'm still after Hamilton's mother, then you get yourself a big A in English, Mr. Krudski."
Will didn't say a word. He just walked over to Finn's desk and grabbed his story. Then he walked out and slammed the door behind him.
Finn breathed another frustrated sigh and ran his hands over his head, but he knew that one day Will would be old enough to understand that love is not to be looked for and found. Love finds you, and once found, you never really get away...
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"It's supposed to be about the students," Finn vented as he sipped his Dos Equis. "No one gets that."
They sat in their favorite booth at El Compadre, a great place to unwind after work until the mariachi band got too loud. Thalia threw back a margarita and licked the salt off the glass.
"Not really, not if you look at the way universities developed," she countered. She sucked on the lime and motioned to the waiter to bring another round. "Look at Oxford in the 15th century. Scholarship was a profession. Everyone who went there became a professor. They all sat around and talked about ideas. It wasn't about teaching, this objective dichotomy of teacher and student. It was a meeting of the minds. Teaching was what you did in grammar school, with children."
Finn folded his hands and rested his chin on them. "One of these days, Thal, you're going to just nod and say, 'You're right, Finn,' and then I'm going to fall over and die of shock."
She wrinkled her long nose at him. "Don't count on it."
He knew it would never happen. He'd been with her long enough to know. But he loved that she challenged him. He loved a lot of things about her -- he just wasn't in love with her. She was tough, smart, fun-loving, and beautiful, with amazing breasts for a woman so thin. It was her Greek heritage, she'd told him once -- Greek women were just built that way, thin with big boobs. Finn started to wish he'd majored in Classics rather than English.
The English department at Colgate University was a tight-knit circle, and Thalia and Finn were its center, everyone's favorite couple, top grad students who would be welcome additions to the faculty. She was always the life of the party -- "I can think with the best of 'em, and drink with the rest of 'em," she liked to say.
They loved all the same things -- travel, the outdoors, exotic food and good wine. Their trip to Africa was possibly the most exhilarating time of his life. But their personalities clashed at times. He was a romantic at heart and tended toward the sentimental; she had a low tolerance for "sappy emotional bullshit." As Finn entered his late twenties, he found that he liked them to spend more quiet evenings at home, reading to each other from their favorite books. But she still wanted to go out every night. They'd fight over it, make up, have sex, and go to sleep thinking everything was OK. But Finn's dreams found him swimming upstream against sharks and icebergs, and he didn't need a degree in psychology to figure out what that meant.
He thought he loved her. He was pretty sure that he did, early on. That got him through the first year -- that and the phenomenal sex. But in the second year, they fell into a rut, both too busy with their careers to find the energy to air the tough questions. Finally, Thalia laid it on the table, and Finn's tepid responses convinced her that the best option was to break up. So they did. But eventually Finn missed the phenomenal sex. He sampled it again, and it was even better than when they were going out. Break-up sex turned into reconciliation sex, and somehow they were back together. It was more serious now, or at least, it must have been more serious, because now they were living together, and Finn couldn't remember whose idea that was. Year four rolled around, and their friends started getting married. Finn thought this was something they should talk about, but Thalia laughed and said she was only 26 and wouldn't even think about that stuff before she got her Ph.D.
And tonight, as he stared across the table into her dark brown eyes, he knew he had to tell her.
"I can't stay," he said flatly. Her eyes flashed with surprise, but she was silent and let him continue. "I've finished my dissertation, I've proven myself at teaching. If they're not going to give me Associate this year, I have no reason to sit around here waiting."
"No reason?"
He gave her a half-smile. "You know what I mean."
"Do you have another offer?"
He shook his head slowly, staring off across the room over her dark-maned head. "I'm not sure it's what I'm looking for."
"What do you mean?"
The neck of his beer bottle hovered right below his lips as he said casually, "I think I might go teach high school."
The waiter walked by again. Thalia grabbed his wrist and stopped him. "Honey, where's that drink?"
"Sorry, I'll be right back." He hurried away.
She turned back to Finn. "You could teach high school here, if that's what you want to do," she said, eyeing him carefully.
"At a public school? Thanks, but I'm not interested in glorified baby-sitting. I want to have students who are there to learn."
"Ah... prep school." She was very calm, even though she had to know he was breaking up with her. She would never let him see the fear. He figured that was probably her German half.
She met his eyes and asked, "Where do you think you'd go?"
"I don't know. I'm looking at Choate, Milton."
"Rawley?"
He shook his head. "Nah, I'm not ready to go home yet. Maybe someday..."
"Milton as a stepping stone to Rawley?"
"I don't know. Why do you assume I want to go to Rawley?"
"Because you're talking about throwing away your career. And because this is the first time I've ever heard you mention teaching prep school, and it sounds like you've already made up your mind. So I figured there must be more to it."
"I've always said that I want to teach in a place where the emphasis is on teaching. I don't know if I can find that at the university level."
The waiter returned and set down her drink. "Here ya go. Margarita, straight up. Extra lime."
Thalia smiled graciously but didn't respond. She was looking at Finn. The waiter went away, and she took a slow sip of the drink. Then another. Then she spoke.
"So... Kate's at Rawley now, isn't she?"
"Yeah. Her husband's about to become the Dean." Finn said this conversationally but then realized he'd walked into a trap. He swallowed. "Why?"
Thalia sighed. She downed the rest of her margarita, sucked on the lime and dropped it in the empty glass. "Can I just say one thing?"
"What?"
She pointed a finger at him. "You're an idiot, Finn. You're going to get hurt."
"Thank you. I'll keep that in mind."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
After Will left, Finn paced around his apartment for half an hour. He went to the fridge and grabbed a beer, then sat down on the couch and tried to watch TV. But he couldn't get his mind off of Kate. He couldn't stop wondering what it was she wanted to tell him. He found himself staring at the telephone.
He went back to the kitchen and popped a frozen dinner in the microwave. He stood there for three minutes watching the seconds count down. Back on the couch he picked up the remote and flipped channels, stopping to watch as three game show contestants failed to name the artist who painted 'The Garden of Earthly Delights.'
"Bosch!" he yelled at the television. Kate loved Bosch. She said his paintings told a story of virtue and vice.
Finn looked at the phone again. Finally he picked it up and dialed.
"Hello?" a male voice answered.
"Hamilton, it's Finn. Is your mother around?"
"Um... no."
"Oh. Do you know where she is?"
There was a long pause, and then Hamilton asked quietly, "Are you going to tell her?"
"Tell her what?"
"About... you know..."
Suddenly Finn remembered their conversation that morning. "No, no. This has nothing to do with Jake. I need to talk to your mom about our poetry class."
"Oh, thank God," Hamilton sighed. Then he yelled, "Mom! It's for you!"
Finn heard a click as Kate picked up another phone. "I got it, Munchie," she said.
"Bye, Finn," Hamilton said, his words punctuated by another click.
"Hi," said Kate.
"I'm sorry to call you at home."
"It's OK. But I don't want to do this over the phone."
"Do what?"
End of Part 3
