A/N: Thanks for reading and more, thank you for replying. I'm still really uncertain about this story because it's so many things I don't usually do, so please continue to let me know what you like and what you don't like. Thank you Jen for the beta.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of this stuff. Titles of the story and chapters from Something More by Secondhand Serenade

Chapter Three: The Storm Is Rolling In

He starts really, really slowly. Her dads get her all set up and leave; she's got a summer workshop of some sort so she moves to New York just after he does. He isn't sure if she knows he's there or not. The one time he tries to call her after the thing at the hotel, her other dad answers and does run over him with words—words about how Rachel is doing better those days and he can't just drop back in until he knows he won't bail on her again. It doesn't matter if they understand his reasons, it doesn't matter if they think he's noble and self-sacrificing and they actually have a higher opinion of him now. It matters to him that they say Rachel does, and in some sick and twisted way they acknowledge how hard he screwed her over because although she's doing the performing thing, she isn't making any sort of social connections. He knows it gets better for her when Kurt lands a fashion internship thing over the summer—at least watching Bravo got him something because it was some kind of a Project Runway-based contest—and moves to the city.

He still doesn't really talk to either of them because he's got three jobs and no time and all these bills and he's still trying to find some way to just make himself… stable. Really, whatever he has isn't much and he could be gone tomorrow and Leroy Berry was right about that one thing. He needs some kind of roots, some kind of motivation that isn't tied to her, and he's still looking. At least now he believes he might eventually find it, which is a hell of a lot better than he thought when he left Lima on the train three hours after hers.

It's only been a few months, it's just before Christmas/Hanukkah, when Kurt tells him in no uncertain terms to pull his head out of his ass; she has a winter concert and he goes and they go out for the most awkward dessert ever afterward so he can explain what he's doing. He gets her New York phone number and gives her a kiss on the cheek and a wish for a good holiday but that's about it.

Then his life falls apart because he comes home and his roommate (one of them) is all but dead. So of course he has to deal with that situation. He missed it. He's been getting to know Adam for months now and… and Adam was an addict the whole time and of course it's easy to look back and see signs.

He's actually high when Kurt calls him a few days later because he's dropped off the grid; it's like he had to see what the appeal was, what his dad and Adam were so happy to maybe die for. It makes a backwards sort of sense and he hates the look on Rachel's face and the tears in her eyes when the two of them drag him back to Kurt's apartment and refuse to let him leave even when the world's worst headache kicks in and in the crash he sleeps for like two days then promises he's never touching that stuff again.

"I've never been so disappointed in you before," Rachel whispers before she kisses his forehead and leaves. He's half-in, half-out and not entirely sure it actually happened, but he feels like it did. And he doesn't like the way it feels because disappointing her was, like the opposite of his goal.

There was this thing called a runner's high that he never really knew about until he finished basic. During the time in between the two training camps, he found there were some habits he couldn't really break. He started off every morning really early, which sucked because it was like November in Lima, running in that slow shuffle that he knew looked completely stupid since there wasn't a box of guys around him singing out monotone songs and calling out times and distances and whatever else. He didn't call that kind of stuff out, and his mp3 had way better music, but he still found himself shuffling through the run to the steady beat of the stupid crap that kept them all going in basic, all in the name of hitting that runner's high again. Well partly that and partly it was one of those habits he picked up as he went along. Those habits became more obvious than ever when he was home.

He only ate with one hand, his right hand attached to his right leg from the moment he sat down. And he ate fast. He never took seconds and he always cleared every plate from the table as he stood. And those were just a couple of the changes. Never mind the physical changes. He had a hard time keeping his weight down because, sure, he thinned out in some ways but not all of them. Not that he was fat to begin with, but running in a climate like Georgia's still trimmed him down. The trouble was, with the pushups and chin ups and just the physicality of all of it, he gained muscle. And since muscle is heavier, it made it harder for him to make weight. He got used to running to balance out the other stuff, often doing two-a-days and running around the base after dinner in his spare time before lights out. So he ran a lot over the time before he got home and ignored his mom's statements that he was too hard, too thin, and didn't really seem like her son anymore. Well it was part ignoring and part because she wasn't speaking to him when he said it and he basically only spoke when spoken to. Kurt was amused to come home from his internship, during their overlap time at home that was only a few days, and note that Finn actually had a gentle, barely-there Southern accent buried somewhere in all the habits and muscle and runner's high.

Finn didn't realize it until he was on the bus from Columbus to Fort Bragg, but Kurt never even mentioned Rachel. Finn didn't bring her up because it's part of the not speaking unless he's spoken to, and they haven't talked to each other at all in six months. He wasn't convinced any single realization of his life had ever been so disappointing.

It's probably dumb but he spends, like, a ton of time with the drug counselor the hospital assigns to Adam. Her name is Emily and she's really, really nice—she's also really helpful and he likes talking to her. She has this way of explaining what's going on with Adam and how he can help his friend. She also gives him this look when he tells her about how he was stupid and tried some stuff—he can't help it, okay?—that makes him spill basically his entire family history under his breath over coffee one afternoon.

There's like three or four more months of talking and watching Adam get better instead of struggling before she tells him that he's, like, actually really good at being supportive and helping people with this stuff. She asks him if he's ever thought about doing it and he hasn't. So in turn for all his talking, she tells him about where she went to school and why she does her job and how it felt hopeless to her because her mother actually died of this stuff when she was in college and she… Emily is incredible and strong and beautiful and she kisses him on a rainy Saturday in the summertime when the air is all steamy because it's hot and raining at the same time and he's seriously not made to live in New York City but he's actually starting to think it'll be okay. Maybe he'll find something yet that he can do and be happy.

But it's not with her, at least not like that. "I… Emily, I can't. There's someone else," he tells her and he means it. And even though all he and Rachel really have between them is disappointment, heartbreak, loneliness—he means it. There's someone else for him, someone who isn't Emily and who is Rachel. (Plus, they also have coffee dates once a week now where they never talk about any sort of issue deeper than how Natalie Caldwell fucking sucks and stole her role in the joint project thing with the juniors at NYADA and the first year grad students from Tisch. He wouldn't trade those coffee dates or those moments with her for anything.)

And he thinks, now that he's helping Adam and taking Emily's advice and looking into school options, maybe things are working out and maybe things are lining up and maybe now's the time. He kisses Rachel at coffee and she's not disappointed, but she does ask if he's sure this time.

"There's no one else," he tells her. "Seriously only you, like always. And now… well, now there's me too. For real. I'm not going anywhere."

She seems to like that answer and she kisses him again.

He really, really liked the job the Army had assigned him to; he didn't sit still on base, he was always out and about and talking to people. Really, getting deployed didn't seem like it would be so bad if he was out talking to people. And even more strangely, for a kid who didn't really like studying English that much, and really was a major fail at Spanish, he was aces at Korean. He should've known he'd do better in a language that was symbols and stuff. Plus, like reading up and down instead of side to side and… he just was way better at that kind of thing. (Eventually, when things started going to shit in Iran again, he also learned Farsi so he could go there and he hated Iran but...yeah.)

Except…he saw stuff. And basically, CA was supposed to be like the military darlings, but sometimes when there was someone blaming Americans for shit, his team of four had to go in and negotiate like… to make sure they didn't end up in jail in Singapore or something maybe worse. And he was supposed to have this 1-to-1 deployment ratio, basically, which meant he'd be home for a month every time he was deployed for a month. Fort Bragg wasn't that bad of a home or anything, and he got time off in between each of his training classes but… it took him kind of a long time to get to New York. He was visiting Kurt, staying with his brother and Blaine in their tiny apartment on their sucky Ikea couch (but it was his brother, y'know? It was fine) and his phone rang at the same time the doorbell rang. He laughed but that was annoying; there had been kind of no shortage of old McKinley alums coming into town to see him since his stop matched up nicely and a little on purpose to a huge off-Broadway debut for Rachel. He'd gotten up the guts to write her a couple of short emails, half in other languages because he was being a little bit of a smug asshole, and he'd already seen her show and they'd had one super awkward dinner as a foursome.

Still, he didn't even think about it being her at the door, and there was something really wrong with looking up and seeing her walk in and start shrugging out of her coat at the same time his C.O. was in his ear telling him he needed to cut his visit short.

"So what's the plan for tonight?" She asked, looking around. Kurt and Blaine looked at Finn at the same time, expecting and sort of like the old married couple they basically were; it would've been funny if he hadn't been hanging up just in time to say:

"Actually… I have to go. I'm leaving. I have to go back to Iran."

Yeah, she didn't actually like that answer. It sort of ruined their night; he had kind of a way of doing that and he was pretty sure it had started to become an actual problem.