***This chapter is about Rachel/Finn. Puck will return in the next chapter. I will try to update as soon as possible***

Rachel crept slowly into the locker room and watched as Finn angrily stuffed some of his clothes and other personal belongings into a gym bag. With the force he was using to put the stuff in, Rachel almost expected the bag to be ripped in two by the time he was finished.

She stood awkwardly waiting for Finn to notice her.

When he didn't, Rachel cleared her throat softly.

No response.

She cleared her throat even louder.

Still no response.

Rachel began faking a coughing fit as a way to announce her presence.

When Finn refused to turn around, Rachel knew he was just ignoring her. She decided to take a more direct approach and said sharply, "Finn!"

Finn didn't turn around, but he began to speak. "Rachel, when did you get here? I'm surprised you don't have pretend birthing classes to go to with your fake boyfriend."

Rachel's face fell. This was going to be harder than she had thought.

Finn grabbed a sweat towel and shoved it in the bag while saying, "You should have stayed behind in glee club. With me out of the room, it would have been the perfect time for everyone to talk about ways to screw me over. Or, maybe you don't need me out of the room, since you think I'm too stupid to notice when I'm being lied to."

Rachel had no excuses to offer, none that sounded convincing to her ears anyway. She decided to ease her way into the conversation and see if she could get Finn to cool off a bit.

Rachel sat on one of the benches in the middle of the room.

"Why are you cleaning out your locker?" she asked.

"The season's over." Finn mumbled.

While staring at Finn's back, Rachel barely heard him add in a whisper, "A lot of things are over."

"Are you gonna miss it? Football, I mean."

"Not really. We didn't win too many games."

"Maybe you should have kept Kurt on the team," Rachel said.

Finn almost smiled at the memory of the football players dancing to Beyonce on the field before he stopped himself. He finished cleaning out the locker, wiping down the shelf to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything, before slamming the door closed. He sat on the bench a few feet away from Rachel, pretending to arrange the items in his bag into some sort of order.

Rachel sat in silence for a few moments trying to gather her thoughts. She didn't want to say anything that would hurt Finn more than he had already been hurt.

Staring at her shoes, Rachel said, "I'm sorry Finn, I should have told you the truth about Quinn's baby as soon as I found out."

Finn kept his eyes focused on the dark red spot on the wall where one of the players had smacked his head during a particularly lively pre-game pep-talk. That guy had needed eighteen stitches, and they had still lost the game by three touchdowns.

If Finn squinted, the dark spot kind of looked like a bird.

Maybe even a crow.

Finn was stalling. He couldn't look at Rachel, not yet.

"Why didn't you tell me?' he wanted to know at last.

"I wanted to." Rachel piped up immediately, "I even came over to your house the same day that Puck told me."

Finn thought back to that night and remembered that Rachel's behavior had been slightly odd, even for her.

"Is that why you kept mentioning biology class and junk?"

"Yes. I was trying to get you to see that Quinn's version of the conception was highly unlikely. I don't even take Biology."

Finn kept looking at the spot-shaped-like-a-bird, but he moved a few inches closer to Rachel on the bench.

"I thought that was kinda weird. I mean, we're in the same science class. You even sit right in front of me. I just figured you came to my house because you were lonely and wanted to hang out."

Rachel shrugged, "I was hoping that with a little push you could guess that Quinn was lying. But, then I realized that you trusted her too much to ever think that she could be so underhanded."

In regards to Quinn's little story, Finn felt like such a moron. He should have done a little more investigating; hell he could have read one of his mom's gyno pamphlets (he had stumbled across one as a child, and had yet to fully recover) and gotten some information.

"I was all set to tell you when you mentioned that Quinn was staying at your house because her parents kicked her out. I was afraid that if I told, Quinn would have no place to go."

Finn knew how Rachel thought.

"Is that the only reason you kept quiet?" Finn queried.

"No. I knew that Sectionals was going up, and I didn't want the group to fracture before then. I wanted to give us a chance to win without any outside distractions."

"I guess that makes sense. I'm not saying it was right, but I understand why you did it. Rachel Berry's got career ambitions." The visceral anger in Finn's voice was all but gone. Now he and Rachel were just having a conversation.

Rachel half-smiled. "Did I mention how sorry I was?"

"Yeah, I think you got that covered."

"Good."

Finn moved a few inches closer.

"Did you actually think that I would kick Quinn out of my house if she had no where else to go?"

"I don't know. Quinn's problem is not really your problem."

"I hate what Quinn did, but I would have my mom make sure she was set up with some friends or back at home before I ever told her to leave."

"That's very sweet of you Finn."

Finn felt his cheeks flush a little. "Whatever," he mumbled.

"I hope that you will continue to be my friend," Rachel said quite seriously.

Finn finally dared to turn to look at Rachel, since now he was sitting only mere inches away.

"Rachel, I'm mad that you didn't tell me, but it wasn't your responsibility. Quinn should have told me, or Puck should have. They put you in an awkward situation."

Rachel wasn't ready to let herself be fully absolved yet. She had been keeping a secret of her own from Finn.

"Finn," she started hesitantly, "before you forgive me, there's something you should know."

Finn raised an eyebrow.

Rachel rushed to get the words out, "the reason I started dating Puck in the first place was to make you jealous enough to break up with Quinn. Puck said that he wanted to be with Quinn and now I feel stupid because I know now why he did it, he wanted to be closer to his child…anyways, I just wanted to apologize for that too because I shouldn't have been so manipulative, and I should have realized that a girl shouldn't resort to tricking a guy because that makes her no better than a cheap whore…" Rachel gulped in some air.

Finn hadn't gotten all of that, but he had gotten enough. He laughed to himself, when he heard Rachel refer to herself as a "whore." She was the least whorish girl he knew in high school.

Finn felt kind of silly but he said, "Rachel, you're not a whore."

"Thank you."

Finn thought about the fake-dating scenario, and felt his anger levels rise at another person.

"Puck's the whore. He's a backstabbing, lying, sneaky, bastard, manwhore. I can't believe I ever thought he was my friend."

Rachel wasn't used to hearing him talk that way, and she was a little put-off. But, she understood that Finn needed to vent his frustration instead of potentially taking it out on Puck's face. For some reason, Rachel really didn't want that to happen.

"I mean seriously, Puck could have any girl he wanted in this school, and he had to choose mine?"

Rachel rested her hand on Finn's arm.

"I should knock his lying teeth out!"

"But," Rachel said, "You won't do that because it wouldn't solve anything."

Finn settled down a bit. "Fine, I wouldn't do that."

Rachel bit her lip, not sure if she should say what she was about to say. "I don't know if this helps or hurts, but I spent a lot of time with Puck when we were pretending to date…"

Finn clenched his jaw.

"…And I think I know why he did what he did. Quinn told Puck to keep his mouth shut because she could make sure that he would never have anything to do with his kid. Puck thought that Quinn only felt that way because she was dating you. He thought that if you got jealous enough to break up with her, then Quinn might come around to the idea of Puck being the actual father. Since Puck's own father left, I think that he was afraid that history was going to repeat itself. Puck wants a shot at being a dad."

Finn moved his arm out from under Rachel's hand. "Are you saying that this is Quinn's fault? Are you saying that Puck played no part in seducing Quinn or convincing her to sleep with him? I bet Quinn just threw herself on Puck and said 'Take me now.' There was no way he could say no to that."

Rachel was getting a little sick of Finn's mocking tone. "Are you finished?" she asked, referring to his little tirade. "I'm not saying Puck is blameless. I am simply saying that it takes two. I just want you to keep that in mind."

Finn nodded slightly.

He tried to ignore Puck and Quinn for the moment, and focus on what Rachel had said earlier

"So…you decided to pretend to date whatshisface so that I might get jealous and break up with my girlfriend?"

Rachel turned beet red. She wasn't expecting the conversation to take this turn.

"I realize how stupid that sounds," Rachel confessed. "I wish I hadn't done it."

Finn threw his hands up in the air, "Well, it worked. I'm single."

Rachel laughed self-consciously. "This isn't exactly how I expected things to turn out."

"Me neither, but here we are."

"I don't know what's going to happen next," Rachel said.

"I do," Finn asserted. "You and I can continue to be friends. We will work our asses off and win Regionals, and we never have to speak to Puck or Quinn again."

"That sounds good," Rachel said referring to the first part, "but can you really expect to never speak to them again?"

"Once I make sure that Quinn has somewhere to live, my obligation to her is over. I can't see ever wanting to interact with her or Puck again. In a way, they betrayed us both. I'll play nice during glee club, but that's it."

Although she had been hurt by Puck's lie, Rachel didn't feel mortally betrayed. He was the one who had eventually told her the truth. Besides, Quinn had the biggest problem out of them all to deal with—a baby. She would need more help than anyone, and Rachel would provide assistance if she could. Plus, they were all in glee club; they would need to work together in order to be successful.

Rachel hoped that once Finn analyzed the situation, he would calm down.

"Aren't you the least bit relieved that you aren't going to be a teen dad?" Rachel asked trying to get Finn to see a brighter side to things.

Finn was silent for a moment. "A part of me is, I guess."

"You can quit your job if you want," Rachel said.

"It is kind of hard getting around in the wheelchair; I'm too tall and my legs kind of drag on the ground."

"You won't have to worry about changing diapers or midnight feedings. You can go back to staying up all night just playing video games."

"I have been neglecting my Wii lately," Finn stated.

"People around school will stop calling you The Impregnator."

"Yeah I…wait…I didn't know people were calling me that."

Rachel coughed, "They're not…that must have been…someone else…"

Suddenly, Finn inched a little closer, "Plus, there's the fact that I'm single."

"There is that," Rachel agreed.

Finn grabbed Rachel's hands in his. He looked her straight in the eye, "I've liked you for awhile now Rachel."

Rachel gulped.

"I mean, you're not like other girls. You're smart and you're funny. You don't care what people think, and you go after what you want."

"That's not true, I do care what others think, and I'm neurotic, and I rub people the wrong way."

"Yeah, but you're a regular person. You're not stuck-up, shallow, or conceited. You don't walk around the halls with a stupid cheerleading uniform on pretending that you're better than anyone else. You don't lie, if you can help it."

Finn used one hand to gently brush the hair off the left side of Rachel's face.

"I can trust you," Finn whispered.

"In other words, I'm not Quinn." Rachel spoke the truth.

"I don't want to talk about her; I want to think about us."

Rachel didn't know what to do. "You think there's an 'us'?"

"There could be." Finn said.

With that, Finn leaned closer and kissed Rachel on the lips.

Rachel panicked.

Her mind was screaming: Rebound! Rebound!

But, she tried to keep her body relaxed.

This is what she had wanted for months.

She had wanted to be kissing Finn Hudson.

The kiss was nice.

It was soft.

It was sweet.

It was free of any major mash-ups of tongues or teeth.

It was…it was…boring.

She remembered back to that day in the hallway when she had kissed Puck when they first started "dating." Finn and Quinn had been coming, and she had wanted to make them jealous. She had kissed Puck wildly, and had even suggested he grab her in places she normally wouldn't let people. That kiss had been exciting, and nerve-wracking, and a little bit dangerous.

All the things that this kiss wasn't.

It wasn't just the exhilaration of potentially being caught that had made Puck's kiss good. Rachel remembered the kiss that Puck had given her when she had visited his house. Puck's sister Emily had insisted on it, but Rachel had gone home that night feeling giddy all the same.

Rachel let Finn kiss her for a few more seconds.

Maybe she wasn't trying hard enough.

That wasn't it.

Maybe Finn was trying too hard.

Rachel thought that perhaps Finn was forcing himself to believe that this what he wanted.

In a weird way, Rachel and Finn made sense. Being together would be simple. It would be easy.

Rachel didn't want easy. She craved a bit of drama. If she couldn't have that, then she would rather be alone.

Slowly, Rachel pulled away from Finn.

"I'm sorry Finn, I can't do this."

"Do I have bad breath or something?" Finn said covering his mouth.

"No, I don't mean physically. Mentally, I can't do this. You just broke up with Quinn, and you're hurt and confused. You want to be with somebody, anybody, but that person can't be me."

Finn backed up some. He scratched his head; he had thought this is what Rachel had wanted. "Are you sure?"

"This is what I want," she said with determination.

Rachel got off the bench and headed for the exit. Before she left, she turned around and said, "I'm here for you, if you need me. You can call me anytime, day or night."

"Thanks Rachel."

Finn watched as Rachel's back disappeared out the door. He stretched out so he was lying on the bench with his hands supporting his head.

Finn closed his eyes. Girls were so confusing. He thought about cutting them out of his life for awhile.

He could always take Kurt to the prom if the offer was still on the table.

Finn thought about matching cummerbunds and splitting the cost of a limo as he let his mind drift off to peculiar places.