Angst warning! I'm not in the greatest Glee mood, and this is the reflection of that.
I.
Finn sees Rachel long before she sees him.
The concerned staff of Rachel's NYU dorm had been reluctant to let the unfamiliar boy into the building with Rachel absent, so he had decided to wait for her on the stoop, thankful for the abnormally warm mid-November air.
Nothing could have prepared him for what greets him twenty minutes later – Rachel, tucked into Jesse St. James' arm, both chatting animatedly and oblivious to the world around them.
Including him.
Finn does the cliché 'clear my throat and make them notice me' gesture, and there is a long, awkward silence as recognition sets in.
Rachel immediately sees the scene through Finn's eyes: Jesse's hand is in the rear pocket of her jeans, stealing the occasional squeeze of her butt, and under her open coat she's wearing a plain black t-shirt that is obviously several sizes too big.
Even Finn can put two and two together.
Now, from an objective perspective, she can appreciate some of the habits she and Jesse have fallen into, in the midst of their charade. He always holds her like this, like he wants to be as close to her as possible. She likes it, and has taken to wearing jeans whenever possible so she can feel the weight of his hand on her ass, and the feeling of being loved and wanted that accompanies it. It's other things too – the way he always turns her alarm off so that he can kiss or coax her awake, because he knows how much she hates hearing the upsetting, jarring sound first thing every morning.
There are things she does too – the fact that she texts him live updates and commentary on an awards show he is unable to watch because he has to work, or the fact that she comes back from the on-campus book sale with more books for him than for her.
Life imitating art, she thinks. Motives aside, they truly do act like a couple.
She can see all this reflected in Finn's gaze as he takes she and Jesse in and prepares herself for the censure that is sure to come.
Frankly, it's almost a relief that no explanation is needed.
Jesse is the first to break the silence, kissing Rachel on the cheek and informing both she and Finn that he's late for rehearsal and has to get going.
He may shoot Finn a menacing look as he goes, but Rachel is shocked and almost oddly proud that that is all there is. She hadn't expected Jesse to play it so cool with the closest thing he has to a nemesis.
The minute Jesse is out of earshot, Finn attempts to sputter out his disbelief.
"Are you kidding me, Rachel? What the hell is he doing here? Didn't he screw you over enough last time? Are you actually crazy?"
Those are all valid questions, but, Rachel reminds herself, Finn is the one intruding on her territory.
She leads him to a nearby café, and into a booth in the back, though he's still seething from seeing her with Jesse.
"Why are you here, Finn?"
He noticeably bristles at the authoritative tone she uses, which she's known for, yes, but never in regard to him.
He seems to remember the reason he is in New York, and the reason he was on her stoop with a duffle bag, and from the looks of it, she won't like it.
"I need to talk to you," he says, almost evasively. "Quinn and I… the wedding is next month, and I, well, I just wanted to see you."
Rachel swallows hard, the tiny bubble of hope she had allowed herself all but gone. She will never understand why he always has this effect on her. She will never forgive herself for it, either. Obviously, this concerned Quinn. It's not as if he had traveled so far to beg her to take him back or to apologize for what he had put her through. He had never made that sort of effort when they were dating. Why should she expect that now that he was marrying somewhere else?
Still, her anger can wait. She's thankful that the focus is off her and Jesse for now, and her curiosity is more than a little peaked as to why Quinn Fabray's fiancé is sitting in front of her.
He smiles at her, and it's the same smile he had given her for years. It makes her feel like she could spend her life making him happy, with only that smile for sustenance. It's a dangerous feeling.
"I miss you, Rachel," he begins, and she bites her cheek. "Quinn is so frustrating, you know. Her and her mom and the wedding… it's like I don't even matter. You never made me this frustrated, and I always felt like you cared about me and put me first. I know in a million years that we will never be together, or anything … but I still have feelings for you and I always have. It scares me that I still think about you. I don't have any intentions of trying to rekindle our relationship or anything like that, but it's like how can I be thinking of you when I'm happy with her? I needed to talk to you about it, because I feel like you just get me."
She doesn't know how to respond to this. Finn has always been selfish and single-minded, but this is too much. But, wasn't some of it her own fault? It's not as if she had ever let on how much he had truly hurt her.
Even on the day she had found the empty condom wrappers in his trash can, a brand she knew with certainty they had never used because he could never be trusted with the responsibility of buying them, hadn't she simply just walked out of his house and changed her Facebook status when she got home? It's not as if he had seen the nights she spent crying into her pillow, or noticed the five pounds she had lost in two weeks until her dads had literally forced her to eat.
He was the one that had approached her at her locker and expressed a desire that they remain friends, and that he was sorry she had to find out the way she did. He had tried to tell her, he assured her, he really had.
So, from Finn's point of view, there is certainly nothing stopping him from asking her advice on his impending marriage. She's a safe harbor – it's not as if she has any feelings on the matter that need to be taken into account. To him, she's Rachel – lifelong loyal friend and perpetual doormat.
Why hadn't she realized it sooner?
"I don't know what to say, Finn," she tells him, the weight of all their history too much to go into now, "It sounds like you need to talk to Quinn. I'm sure that she wouldn't like it very much if she knew you were here."
"Nah, she knows better than to be worried about you," Finn says, laughing it off, not realizing how much his words sting her.
To her credit, she doesn't look back when she gets up and walks out. From the back, she's the image of the strong, confident woman.
It also means that he can't see the tears streaming down her face.
II.
"I've never seen you like this," Autumn says accusingly, once the director has had enough of them and sent she and Jesse to run lines "until they stop fucking up."
Jesse growls loudly and swipes at a lamp that goes crashing to the floor, but thankfully does not break.
Just when he thought he and Rachel were doing so well, Finn had to come back into the picture.
"What did she do?" Autumn asks, "Because this is obviously about Rachel. Am I right?"
Jesse tosses his script carelessly onto the ground, but refuses to answer her.
"Opening night is Wednesday, Jesse. This Wednesday. Whatever it is, you need to get past it. Romeo's a lover, not a barbarian."
"Talk. To. Me," Autumn says slowly, "I'm pretty good at listening."
"Rachel's ex came to see her," Jesse finally obliges her, though he seems reluctant. "The guy is a talentless Neanderthal."
"If that's true, then why are you worried? I'm sure Rachel knows how lucky she is to have you."
"One would think," Jesse tells her. "But she has this way of putting this guy on a fucking pedestal, even though he doesn't deserve it in the least and he screws her over every chance he gets."
"Surely she realizes that now that she has you," Autumn attempts to soothe.
Jesse shakes his head, dropping down to the couch and slamming his fists into his knees.
"I hurt her really badly when we were in high school, and she still can't see past it. She won't even give me a chance and we were doing so well!"
"You guys are back together again. She obviously has given you another chance," Autumn rationalizes, confused at why Jesse feels so threatened.
Jesse realizes that he may be broaching unsafe territory given his and Rachel's arrangement. "Never mind," he mutters unconvincingly.
"Look," Autumn says, sitting down beside him and cupping his face in her palm. "You're smart, talented, hardworking, and incredibly hot. If Rachel can't see that, I know a million other girls who already do."
She holds his gaze for a couple of seconds too long, and Jesse senses her attraction to him.
He gets up immediately, the urge to kiss her almost intuitive, and she looks crestfallen as the reality of his rejection dawn on her, too.
"I…"
"No, that was my fault," Jesse attempts to clarify, running a hand through his hair. "Let's not speak of this again."
Autumn nods sadly and retrieves his script from the ground, making a show of reading through it with her back to him.
He has sensed Autumn's crush on him for a while, and he feels badly for putting her in such an unfair situation. He's already come so far, and he knows that if he loses Rachel again, it won't be because of some stupid, meaningless mistake.
He just hopes it won't be to Finn Hudson, either.
III.
He muddles through the rest of the day, and at 6pm on the dot, the close of rehearsal, he is surprised to get a text from Rachel asking him to come over.
He hasn't heard from her all day, which isn't usual for them anymore, but he had figured that he would be a free agent today. Rachel wouldn't need his "services" once Finn was around. Surely she wouldn't have told him about their arrangement because of his inevitable ridicule, but she wouldn't have needed to play up her new boyfriend around Finn either.
He's more than curious about how her day with Finn went, but then he grimaces and realizes that Rachel may actually want to keep up the charade of their relationship as some sort of dramatic revenge scenario to get back at Finn.
He braces himself for having to interact with the football player for whatever it is Rachel inevitably has planned. Whatever it is, he can't promise he will be as civil and cool as he was this morning.
She means too much to him to be tame around the guy that had broken her heart countless times.
He wishes she would admit she feels the same way. He pretends sometimes, whispering the words to her when she's still asleep, praying that somehow they will be absorbed into her psyche, willing them to manifest themselves. However, every time he catches a glimpse of her feelings for him – say for instance when she has a simple dinner waiting for him after a long shift or when she endures his need to study with Queen playing in the background – it's quickly replaced by a seeming unwillingness to trust him, almost as if he's hiding more eggs or another long-lost birth mother behind his back.
He doesn't yet know why it's so easy for her to forgive Finn Hudson for all the things he has done, yet it's impossible for her to even contemplate lowering her guard and just fully giving into the happiness he knows she feels with him.
But, unexpectedly, when Rachel answers her door, she's alone, and Finn is nowhere to be seen.
"Hi," she says cheerfully. "How was your second to last rehearsal?"
He sidesteps her question for one of his own. "Where's Finn?"
She sighs. "I don't want to talk about him," she tells Jesse calmly. "Mitra is staying at Jeremy's tonight and I've been waiting for you all afternoon."
She links her arms around his neck and kisses him, and it feels weird, because she isn't normally this direct when she wants them to be intimate.
She's still wearing his t-shirt from earlier, and she pulls it over her head now, leading his hands up to cup her bare breasts.
He's always been good at taking a cue, and he does as she likes, lightly squeezing while grazing his thumbs across her nipples, taking great pleasure in the sounds she makes.
After a while, he becomes impatient and shifts, one hand going for the button of her jeans, and she takes careful steps back towards the bed.
It's not until she reaches into a tiny box she keeps on the shelf and locates a condom that the feeling of something being completely off with her catches up to him.
He's respected her wishes not to have intercourse, even if he feels that her distinction between that and the stuff they actually do holds little to no merit.
Still, he sees no apparent reason to diverge from their routine now.
She senses his hesitation and smiles reassuringly. "It's okay," she tells him, "You can do whatever you want to me tonight."
If he were any other guy, those words would probably be music to his ears. Too bad he has always been different.
His hand had been on his zipper, ready to relieve the aching discomfort of the restrictive material, but he leaves it zippered and reaches for the shirt he had discarded seconds ago.
"What are you doing?" Rachel demands, reaching for his zipper and dragging it down herself, while trying to pull the shirt out of his hands.
"We're not doing this tonight, Rachel," he says conclusively. "I don't know what this is about, but you obviously don't want this."
"I'm telling you that I do!" she practically yells at him. "You keep telling me that it's okay to want what I want, and that nobody should judge me. Well, that includes you!"
"Well, we're not doing this."
"I'm paying you to be my boyfriend," she says in a fierce whisper. "I thought you said this just came with the territory. You didn't have a problem with this before."
"You want to know why? We've been doing this for weeks, Rachel. And this is the first time I've felt like your prostitute. You may be paying me to be your boyfriend, but I am not Finn Hudson's fucking understudy! You want him; you can go and have him. Leave me the hell out of it!"
She's stunned that he would think that and accuse her of making this all about Finn, when all she has been thinking about all day is how much happier she's been with him than she'd ever been with Finn.
"Get out," she tells him evenly. "Just go."
Unfortunately, this is not the end of Finn!