She's melodramatic. Loud. Imposing. Articulate to a fault. She'd be the first to say that she was high-maintenence and annoying. Even a little conceited at times. She wants too much. She feels everything too much. Her emotions run deep within the extremes. She would be the first to cry, the first to be be furious, the first to laugh. She would also be the first to love. Everybody he knows says that she's a drama queen, including herself. He just thinks it's because she cares too much. He thinks she puts too much of herself into everything.
She has these high expectations for him. So high up there that sometimes he fears he may never reach them. When he tells her so, she just smiles and says that he will. She's confident. She believes in him wholeheartedly. Because that's just who she is. Rachel Berry immerses all that she is into everything she does; body, heart and soul.
And when she loves him... God. It overwhelms him. It's completely mind-blowing how much faith she has in him, how much love she can give. It leaves him breathless sometimes, when he thinks about it for too long. Sometimes it terrifies him, because she is Rachel Berry and he is Finn Hudson, and things never seem to come easy for either of them. He sometimes thinks that all signs have been pointing against them from the beginning.
She is the stunning young ingenue. But he has never really thought of himself as the hot male lead. Sure, he knows he's good looking. And yeah, he's the popular kid that everyone kind of wants to be. But they're in Losertown, Ohio. Being the big man here means nothing. He's terrified that it's all he'll ever be. The biggest guy in town. She has never really belonged here. This town has always been too small for her. And sometimes he thinks he is too. When she leaves (and he knows she will) Lima, she'll leave everything about this small town that has never learned to appreciate her. And maybe that will include him. Rachel is ambitious, over-eager maybe, but always graceful. She has always known what she wants. He just knows he wants to get out of Lima. She's too good for him and in his darkest thoughts, Finn fears she'll probably always be too good for him.
Sometimes he wakes up and thinks, this is it. This is the day where he's going to disappoint her for that one time too many and she'll realize that her love is something that is far too valuable to waste on someone like him. The way he holds on to her heart is awkward and clumsy, forever juggling it in his large and incompetent hands, with his good intentions and his simplistic declarations. He feels like an oaf in love with a princess. He is in every way the complete opposite of her, with her flowery words and her romantic notions and her ability to make him fall, fall, fall with a quirk of a smile on her face. She holds his heart daintily in the palm of her small hands. And he is too acutely aware of how easy it would be for her to crush it flat. He wonders if it would still be worth it if (when) that happens.
But every morning he still finds her waiting at his locker, with that smile on her face that makes it glow, and he is certain that smile is born out of absolute adoration. For him. When she takes his hand and weaves their fingers together, humming under her breath a song that he knows is all about happiness and forever after, he thinks maybe she's singing about them. This makes him feel a little better.
Their eyes always seem to find each other unconsciously. He always knows where she is in the stands, even with hundreds of bloodthirsty spectators shouting his name and sweat seeping its way into his eyes. She just stands out, with her Team Finn t-shirt and that crazy, proud smile adorning her face. She puts gold stars next to her name and he puts her name next to every single star he sees.
She is so ridiculously tiny and he is a huge bumbling baboon. In the beginning he was always afraid of hurting her with his large and clumsy body that was always knocking into her and leaving her breathless. So he held her like she was fragile, always keeping the extent of his desires in check. But then one day she jumped onto him determinedly, her legs locking themselves at his waist and her arms clasped tightly around his neck. He was the one stumbling then, the breath knocked out of him. That's when he realized the force of her determination was just as strong as his body. He becomes considerably less careful ever since.
He finds himself wanting to be better. He works harder at everything. Glee. Football. Basketball. Even school. He's constantly pissed with himself when he just doesn't get it. You are a moron, just like everybody thinks. But she's always patient with him, even though sometimes he sees her holding back her frustration. When he slumps his body in defeat in her kitchen chair, moaning about the complexities of Calculus (Or Spanish. Or Biology. Or English. The list is an embarrassingly long one) that he will never understand, she just forces his head back up off the table and tells him primly to try again.
The first B+ he ever got in his life was in Math. He had to shake his head a few times, reading and re-reading the red capital letter at the top of his paper. She had been waiting for him by his locker, a nervous smile plastered onto her face. He'd given the test to her wordlessly as he hid his face in his locker, unable to contain his giddy grin. When he'd heard the squeal, he had turned around immediately and grabbed her by the waist. He'd spun her in circles in the middle of the school hallway, barely missing a few freshmen hurrying to class. Her laughter had been ringing in his ears as she'd begged him to put her down. "I'm so proud of you," she had said softly, with a blinding smile on her lips and tears in her eyes. Pride had bloomed in his chest at her simple words and he'd known he was going to do whatever it took to be the best just so he could love this girl forever.
When he was a kid he'd always loved fairy tales (he would hang himself up the flag pole by his underwear before he'd ever admit this to anyone, though). Now he thinks that Rachel Berry is like the princess in the tower. He thinks that he's the prince, and all of his shortcomings, faults and disappointments, well they're the foundation of that tower. But she isn't just any princess waiting to be rescued. She's like Rapunzel with her long freaky hair (he always thought that one was a little creepy - and that her hair probably smelled), she has ways and means to find shortcuts for him to reach her faster. Which is good. Because Finn Hudson is a bumbling prince, and he sure as hell needs them.