DISCLAIMER: I neither own Glee nor the characters. They are the property of Ryan Murphy and FOX. This is purely for fun. Enjoy!
Chapter Eighteen: Without You
He slept a lot these days; the blissful release of sleep brought him more than just respite from the normal everyday pain. There in his dreams, waiting for him every single night with a smile and a sweet "bonsoir" was Rachel. Sure, she was but a mere figment of his imagination, a simple imprint of memory replayed on loop during his slumber but it was more than enough for him. For in sleep, he could be with Rachel once more, and the agony only returned when he opened his eyes in the morning.
Lethargy was a kind way of describing Finn's state of mind after Rachel's return to Paris. He woke up every morning aching to return to the blissful ignorance of sleep but continuing on with his life like he had promised her. During the day he shut himself off to all feeling, every emotion, for if he felt anything at all it would cause a tidal wave that he was sure to drown in. Detachment was his only way of coping with his loss, ignorance and avoidance his new best friends.
The room at the end of the hall, now vacant with the stale scent of her in the air, was his one respite when it all became too overwhelming to bear on his own. He would lay in her old bed, trying desperately to connect to anything in the room that still reminded him of her. She had left a headband in her drawer and instead of giving it to his mother to mail to her he held onto it, grasping it in his hands at night and trying to remember the way it once looked in her hair; the wisp of a smile on her lips, the music ringing in her angelic voice.
He spoke to her almost every day, but it never seemed like it was enough for either of them. The time difference greatly impeded their communication, and the connection that once existed between them did not transcend the Internet and phone lines. He didn't just want to hear her voice, he wanted to feel her breath caressing his cheek. He wanted to see the brightness in her eyes when she described the things that excited her. He wanted to feel the fabric of the adorable clothes that she bought on the Champs-Elysees, instead of seeing it through his computer screen.
It wasn't enough. It could never be enough.
He understood now why most long distance relationships didn't last long; the longing was so great, so intense, that sometimes he found himself questioning whether or not it was worth all the pain involved. He became irrationally jealous whenever she mentioned any male other than her fathers, and to be honest, he wasn't even sure her dad's knew that he existed. Did they know that Rachel had a boyfriend in the States? Was she trying to hide him from them on purpose? He stopped focusing on it when his thoughts became moody and irrational, something that had been happening with more and more frequency.
He just missed her so damn much; not thinking about her was simply less painful than the alternative. If he wasn't directly speaking to her or messaging her on facebook then he pretended that he was numb of all feelings or emotions.
It was driving his family insane. He barely spoke to anyone these days, especially the members of his family. It wasn't that he was trying to punish them or anything, but they knew more than anyone else how much Rachel meant to him, and after she had left they all acted like she had never even been there. They just continued on with their lives and no one seemed to care that she was gone. Kurt of course cared more than his parents did, but he wasn't the one staying up until 1 am to wish Rachel a good morning. He wasn't the one recording glee club practices and attaching them to e-mails so she could keep up with their progress.
Glee club. That was a whole different issue for Finn entirely. Sometimes glee club depressed him so much that he skipped multile practices just to avoid any reminders of Rachel. It was the one place where her missing presence affected him the most; it truly felt like she had been a part of the group and now it just felt empty without her. It didn't seem fair to Finn that she couldn't experience Nationals with them even though she had been one of the main reasons the team had made it so far. Santana strutted around the stage like it was named after her, and Rachel's name was never mentioned at practice.
It was like Rachel didn't exist anymore. Like everyone had forgotten about her.
Everyone except for Finn. She haunted him day and night, in his sleep and while he was awake. He only pretended not to think about her so he didn't feel like crying all the damn time, but even in his voluntary ignorance she still revolved around everything in his life. It was a weird contradiction, but it was working for him so far as March continued towards April. He hadn't gone insane yet, which was the most he could hope for, given the situation.
Spring break was coming up quickly. He and the other guys had been planning their trip for months; a hiking/camping trip along the Appalachian Trail. He'd given Mike the money for it ages ago, and Puck and Sam had been bugging Finn to help them buy camping equipment for weeks, but he didn't even feel like going on the damn trip anymore. Part of him wished that he'd never spent the money so he could have saved it towards a plane ticket to France. Kurt and the girls were going down to Miami Beach, so bikinis and tans were the only things on their mind.
In fact, spring break was the only thing the group talked about during glee club. He decided to drag himself to rehearsal that afternoon, simply because Mr. Schue had started to nag him incessantly about his lack of focus and drive in regards to the club. Sitting in the far back of the room, he tried to block out the inane chattering around him; mosquito nets and sunblock and hiking boots and palm trees were the backdrop to his torturous afternoon.
Rehearsal eventually began after their teacher arrived. Santana got up to perform her solo and Finn personally thought it sounded like cats howling at the moon as he fought against the urge to cover his ears. That would be considered rude though, so he just swallowed his distaste and allowed her to finish the song.
During the applause, however, a thought entered his mind that was so strong, so powerful, that it passed through his lips without preamble, before his brain could stop his voice from saying it.
"Rachel would have sang it better."
No one in the classroom moved as Santana's eyes shrunk into dangerous slits of anger. He hadn't meant to say it out loud, especially at that volume, but it was done and there was nothing he could do to take it back. It's not like he wanted to anyway; he knew for a fact that Rachel could sing the names from the phone book with a cold and still sound better than Santana ever could.
"Well, Lurch finally speaks," she hissed dangerously, coiled like a snake about to strike. "What was it that you just said?"
"You heard me," he shrugged nonchalantly, fully aware that this was the first time he'd opened his mouth at glee club for ages. "Rachel would have sang the song better. Her voice is better than yours is." He didn't know what demon had possessed him to confront Santana in this way, especially concerning an issue that he never wanted to talk to anyone about, but the words flowed from him unabashedly as he tried to stay in control of his raging emotions.
"Well then let's get Rachel to sing the song then!" She said with false brightness until her face hardened into stone. "Oh wait, we can't, because she lives on the opposite side of the world and she's never coming back!"
"Santana," Mr. Schue warned as he noticed Finn's face turning a bright red, but Santana ignored him and continued.
"She's probably knee deep in croissants right now, isn't she? All those French men, wanting to butter her bread," she said tastelessly. "I bet they're dying to get a taste of that little cream puff. It must be driving you crazy." Her cruel voice was taunting him, filling his head with images he didn't want to see. Her words were like daggers straight into his heart and he couldn't hear any more of it. Just looking at Santana and the viciousness in her eyes was making him feel ill.
Shaking his head, he got up from the seat and grabbed his belongings, heading for the exit so he could go home. He could feel everyone's looks of sympathy but he chose to ignore them, focusing only on Santana as he walked passed her. Normally he would just ignore her, close himself off from the world like he'd been doing since Rachel had left, but there was something he needed to say to her that couldn't wait any longer.
"You're a bitch," he said simply, looking right into her eyes as she chuckled brightly.
"Um, have you been paying attention?" She turned to her girlfriend Brittany and the two shared a smile.
"But you're not heartless," he continued, watching as her smile faded away. "I know you're not because I see the way you act with Brittany. You love her. I can tell." He took a deep breath and knew that he was about to open wounds that he never thought would heal properly after this day. "So for a minute, just imagine that you were the one that lost the only person you've ever loved. That Brittany was somewhere around the world, so far out of reach that it almost seemed impossible to hope for the best. That every time you wanted to hold her, or needed her, she wasn't there." She was stunned into silence, so Finn continued uninterrupted. "You were horrible to Rachel while she was here. You were jealous, and mean, and spiteful and you didn't deserve her friendship. So don't talk about her like you know her, because you know nothing about her, or me, or what it feels like to lose the one person you love more than anything else in the world. I'm done with you, and I'm done with this club."
He walked out of the choir room with twelve sets of eyes staring holes in his back at his departure. He didn't care anymore. They could stare all they wanted to.
He arrived home and his mother was smiling tentatively at him, a thick white envelope in her hands as she held it out to him. The return address was from UAkron
But Kurt's envelope had been much thicker than this one as he took the smooth paper into his hands.
He didn't know how much more stress he could take.
His mother looked expectant, but there was a twinge of sympathy in her gaze, like she already knew the contents of the envelope before he even opened it. His heart was booming in his chest when he slipped out the letter, and he didn't have to read it all the way through to understand it's contents.
He hadn't gotten in. They said his grades had been fine but he'd missed the deadline for the application by a few weeks. After a few sentences urging him to apply for the spring semester he crumpled up the letter in his hands, facing the reality that lied in front of him.
"I'm so sorry, honey," his mother said sympathetically as he squeezed the letter into a ball in his fist. "At least you know that you can apply next semester and get in."
"I don't want to apply next semester," he said bitterly, feeling overwhelmed. "Do you know what this means, Mom?" When she shrugged he had to force himself to continue, opening up even more wounds that had only begun to heal. "If I couldn't get into UAkron then no school in New York is going to accept Rachel. We applied too late. Now there's no way that we can be together in the fall." It was true; they had been hoping against hope that it wasn't too late to get into a school for the fall semester, the only real way that Rachel could legally come back to the states. Now without the promise of school, where did that leave Finn? Stuck in the tire shop all year long while all of his friends moved on to bigger and better things. Before, he thought he might have to endure the entire summer without her; now it would be almost a year before she could come back to the states.
It was hopeless. First he lost Rachel, now he had lost whatever ambition she had been able to inspire in him over the past few months. Dragging himself upstairs, he felt hollow as he entered his room, shut the door behind him, and landed face-down onto his bed, burying his head in his pillows and forcing himself to shut down. Normally he would call Rachel as soon as he came home from school, but he was too ashamed of his failures to admit it to her.
As he forced himself into a restless sleep, he realized that she deserved better than a Lima loser like him anyway.
He and Rachel were over.
"Finn!" His mother called. "Rachel is on the phone from France!"
He buried his head under the pillows until his mother claimed he was sick.
The following night his phone beeped loudly sometime in the early hours of the morning, and he reached over sleepily to check his alerts.
"Rachel Beri wrote on your facebook wall."
He shut off his phone and went back to bed.
"Honey, Mr. Schuester called and wanted to know about glee club." His mother asked him at breakfast a few days later. Kurt looked at him expectantly and he couldn't even force himself to make eye contact with him. "Are you showing up to rehearsal this afternoon?"
Peeking over at his brother for a split second, he saw the look of pity in Kurt's eyes and that made up his mind.
"No. Tell him I quit for good."
"Wake up!" A loud, shrill voice could be heard as he slowly lifted out of his dreams. Something was shaking, like an earthquake was ripping apart his bedroom, but when he opened his eyes he realized that it was him that was shaking and not the ground.
"Wake up, you lard ass!" He strained his eyes against the light in the room and realized that he was staring up at Santana Lopez, who was shaking his body violently in order to rouse him from his slumber. "Jesus Christ, you weigh a ton."
"I'm awake, Santana, I'm awake!" He moaned, pushing her off of his bed and covering his bare chest with his blankets. She crossed her arms over her midriff and scowled, sticking her nose up in the air.
"Don't flatter yourself, Man Boobs. I got a perfectly good chest waiting for me to fondle at home, I'm not here for your floppy man titties."
He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, groaning deeply. "What are you doing here, Santana? It's Saturday." Another thought popped into his head as well as he noticed the date on his bedside calendar. It was already early April, almost a month since Rachel had left. "It's also the first day of Spring Break, why aren't you halfway to Florida yet?"
She sighed deeply, looking at her fingernails as an attempt to seem bored. There was something about her demeanor, though, that threw him off. Normally he could sense her vicious vibes from a mile away, but today she seemed oddly calm and non-threatening. "I came here to talk to you. We have some unfinished business to attend to."
Finn groaned loudly, falling back onto his pillows and pulling the sheet over his head. "If this is some lame attempt to apologize and get me to come back to glee club then you can save your breath. You guys don't need me for Nationals."
"Actually, we do need you for Nationals, Tubs." She paused, taking a deep breath before continuing. "But we also need Rachel, too."
Rachel. Just hearing her name spoken aloud was like sticking pins right into his heart. She had stopped calling him days ago, and even though he was the one to break off contact with her, it still hurt like hell to know that she had finally given up on him. But then again, he had given up on himself first, and he only had himself to blame.
"Rachel is in France, Santana. She's no help to either of us anymore."
"You were right about me, Finn." She said steadily, grabbing Finn's attention. She never spoke to him with such civility. "That day at glee club, when you stormed out. What you said to me really. . .stuck." She admitted with a frown. "Why haven't you been calling Rachel?"
Groaning deeply, he pulled himself out of bed and threw on a dirty t-shirt that was lying on his floor. "How did you even know about that?"
"She's been going crazy on everyone's facebook walls asking about you. She's worried that you found another girl, but we all know you're not that suave. Since you're not talking to any of us anymore, we're starting to get worried."
He shrugged, not wanting to talk about this issue with Santana of all people, but finally wanting to get it off of his chest. "I didn't get into school, Santana. There's no way she's getting into school this fall either. Does she really expect to wait a whole year for us to be together again? She deserves to be with someone who makes her happy, not some loser who's stuck in his shitty hometown halfway around the world."
"Well as far as Rachel is concerned, I think she is willing to wait for you and you're being a complete and total asshole to her. She misses you and you're just ignoring her because you don't think you're good enough." She shook her head, clearly disappointed. "Suck it up, be a man, and apologize."
"And how exactly should I do that when she's five thousand miles away from me?" He asked, a hard edge to his voice. The last person he wanted to talk to about this was Santana, so what was she trying to prove? He already knew that he was being an ass and needed to apologize, but what good would it do if they couldn't be together to make the apology count?
It was only then when Finn noticed the envelope in Santana's hand. There was no writing on the front of it, but it still caught his attention as she held it out for him.
"Listen, I wasn't kidding when I said that we needed you and Rachel for Nationals. We can't do it without the two of you."
"What is this?"
"It's a present from the glee club. We put all of our Spring Break money together so you can go to France and get our girl back." Finn took the envelope out of her hands and opened it to find two round trip tickets to Paris. This must have cost them a small fortune, more than their meager vacation money could afford. "Sugar threw in whatever money we couldn't cover," Santana added when she noticed the shock on Finn's face. "I spoke to Figgins and he said that as long as her visa is extended, she can come back to school. What you two decide to do afterwards is up to you."
"I don't understand," he said, his throat clogging up with emotion. "Why are you doing this for me? You hate me."
"I hate everyone," she said, her eyes hard. "But I respect you for what you said to me at glee club. If our roles were reversed, and I was the one who had lost Brittany, I would probably be a depressed, mopey idiot too. I hope this makes up for the shitty way I've been treating you two."
He couldn't stop himself from pulling Santana into a strong hug, and she froze in his embrace with a grimace pulling down her lips. "All right, Frankenteen, release me. Your man stench is making me dry heave."
"Thank you, Santana," was all he could say before he released her, running over to his dresser and pulling out his passport before frantically shoving clothes into his football bag. He was packed in record time and Santana even drove him to the airport. Before he left, however, he made sure to grab the piece of paper with Rachel's address on it, his fingers grazing over her perfect, loopy script.
47 rue de Rivoli
4ème étage
Paris 75004
Barely two hours later, Finn Hudson was in the air and flying towards France with only one thing on his mind.
Finding Rachel and bringing her home.
Merci mille fois, mes amis!
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