Fic: Love Was Meant For Beauty Queens, Chapter 1
Title: Love Was Meant For Beauty Queens
Pairings: Finn/Rachel, Finn/Quinn
Rating: R/NC-17
Disclaimer: Glee is the property of Twentieth Century Fox and affiliates and not mine.
Word Count: 3644
Spoilers: All of season 1. Although only in the loosest of sense as the story doesn’t really follow canonical history.
Summary: Finn and Rachel attempt a friendship. Sequel to At Eighteen (Come Dance With Me). Alternate History.
LOVE WAS MEANT FOR BEAUTY QUEENS
Chapter 1
On Monday morning, Finn walked down the hallways of William McKinley High. The path was always the same: up the stairs, smile at the Cheerios, turn right, pass the puckheads, high-five Jones and Chang, straight ahead and stop at the lockers.
The path was always the same but Finn didn’t feel the same today.
Okay, so he was holding a bunch of roses that he had bought at the gas station, which was like not normal; and the thorns were totally digging into his palm and painful. The kind of pain that was like hitting the ground hard when he got plowed by two linebackers; his face eating dirt and he couldn’t breathe because of the bodies crushing him. But Finn only clutched the roses tighter because he was used to working through the pain. It was all part of being the quarterback.
So he had the bunch of roses in his hand and he had stopped at a different locker, not his. He took a couple of breaths, smoothed his hair with his free hand, and straightened up.
You can do this, Hudson, he told himself. Just talk to her. But don’t say anything dumb.
She had her back to him and her small frame was buried in the locker as she pulled out her books for class. She hadn’t noticed him yet and Finn was kind of glad. He knew he had to do this but he wasn’t looking forward to her anger. He had messed up, real bad.
So he kind of waved the roses at her, because they were the only thing Finn could think of to make things right. A couple of petals went flying, a scattering of red on the floor.
‘I got you flowers,’ he said.
She turned to face him and her ponytail whipped round. His shoulders dropped and he shifted his feet when he saw her. Like he knew she would be mad and all but still kind of hoped. She was glaring at him and her mouth was a thin pursed line.
‘You ruined Senior Prom for me, Finn,’ she told him. ‘And a bunch of lame ass red roses isn’t going to make it okay.’
‘I’m sorry, okay. I was a total ass,’ he said, scuffing his shoes. Finn took to focusing on the dirt marks on his sneakers as he spoke to her - the mud was this splotchy blob against the white and it kind of looked like dog poo, which was kind of gross, so he was trying to rub it out with his heel - because he thought if he looked at her, eye to eye, that something would break.
‘Yes, you were. Prom was our night, Finn. It was meant to be special.’
‘It was special,’ Finn told her, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them.
And his eyes bugged out and he knew he was freaking, because he hadn’t meant to say that, but now the words were out there and Quinn Fabray was looking at him. Waiting. With her hands on her waist and one foot tapping.
‘It was special because, uh, you were there. Because you’re my girlfriend, Quinn. And you’re special,’ he hurried.
Finn was kind of surprised and proud that he could come up with that kind of shit without thinking. So maybe he wasn’t completely dumb. Just dumb enough to sleep…but no, Finn wasn’t going think about that because if he thought about it his brain hurt, like worse than normal, and his chest hurt and everything just hurt.
The hard line on Quinn’s mouth softened and she didn’t look like she was going to rip into him any time soon.
‘This doesn’t make it all better,’ she told him. ‘But it’s a start. We can discuss how exactly you’re going to make it up to me during homeroom.’
Finn nodded his head quickly because Quinn wasn’t being like a total bitch about the whole thing and Finn would take what he could get. Maybe Puck was right and Quinn had been on the rag during Prom night. Which kind of made Finn feel bad, like even more than he had already been.
The first bell rang and Quinn was pulling him by the sleeve as she started talking about carrying her shopping and buying her dinner at some really fancy restaurant that Finn had only ever driven by. Finn continued to nod and he was listening to Quinn, really, but his mind was kind of on how much this was going to cost him and he might need to pick up some extra shifts because his wallet was stretched from the motel room.
When his mind hit the motel room, everything kind of went still but rushing too.
Mouth. Hands. Legs. Breasts. Skin.
The feel of silky dark brown hair running through his fingers.
He turned his head, cricking his neck, and there she was. Rachel Berry.
Rachel in a red pleated skirt that bounced and made her butt look awesome and her legs like extra long, like they could go on for miles and miles. She was wearing a black top with some animal - was that a bird? - stitched on front and Finn thought she looked cute, like really really cute. She was walking fast, like marching or something, and it was like she was in total control, which was completely hot. Finn could remember what it was like for Rachel to be in control, on top of him in bed, and she knew exactly what she wanted.
She stopped walking all of a sudden, earning a couple of glares from a couple of students, and Finn knew she had seen him.
They stood in the hallway staring at each other and all he could think was that Rachel looked good with her clothes on and that Rachel looked good with her clothes off. And it was pretty much screwed up and screwed, screwing and now Finn was thinking of screwing Rachel and he was so screwed.
They stood in the hallway staring at each other; a good four or five feet away from one another. Students pushed passed him and Finn was too big and too solid so he didn’t budge but it was not like he could move anyway. The rubber soles of his shoes had like melted and he was super glued to the floor.
She was biting her lower lip and wringing her hands. Her eyes were dark, dark brown and she was staring at him with this look and his chest and brain were hurting again. Rachel’s eyes shifted to the right and her face kind of fell as she gazed at the suddenly too red, too bright roses in Quinn’s hands.
His hand kind of half lifted itself and he was thinking of maybe waving to her or something because that seemed like the thing to do. Only Quinn grabbed his hand and she was telling him how they would be late for class and he let Quinn drag him away as the second bell rang.
*
Finn had one class together with Rachel, History, which he knew she was only taking for extra credit. So Finn thought he was prepared for seeing Rachel after the almost disaster in the morning. Finn had thought real hard during homeroom when Quinn was going on and on about how lucky he was to have her as a girlfriend. And Finn got it, okay. He knew he should be grateful because he was dating Quinn Fabray and all the dudes at school would kill to be in his position or whatever. So he was just going to pretend like the whole thing with Rachel never happened, like Rachel never existed in the first place.
Only he kind of had this habit from Sophomore year, where he kept his eye out for short brunettes with amazing singing voices. And he had only kept an eye out in the first place because he had been worried that she would go all swimfan on him. But then he just kind of continued even after he left glee club, even after there was no glee club. So his eyes kind of zoomed in on Rachel during class, but it was not like it was planned or anything.
Rachel always sat at the very front with her colored pens stacked on the corner of her desk in order of black, blue, purple, pink and red.
(Finn knew the order because every class Santana would walk by Rachel flicking the pens off the desk. He couldn’t count the number of times Rachel had crouched down gathering the pens and then lining them up again at the top right hand corner of her desk, using a mirror to double check that the pens were lined exactly straight.)
Finn always sat at the back with Mike Chang, Santana and a couple of other Cheerios. Santana would bitch about everyone and Finn could normally tune her and the other Cheerios out. Mike Chang was pretty cool. Chang was a quiet dude but he had some killer moves on the field, like the way he dodged that linebacker and twisted his body was all kinds of awesome. Anyway, it meant that History was one of the few classes that Finn could normally sit at the back and mostly try and pay attention.
Except that Rachel Berry had History with him.
And he was staring at the way her back was hunched over and her shoulders were tensed and how her long brown hair, which was awesome and soft when he ran his fingers through it, was also kind of covering her face right now. His hand gripped his pen and his breath hitched every time she made the slightest of moves.
Turn, turn, turn.
She didn’t turn.
And shit, there was half a blackboard full of crap that Mr R had written down for a paper due next week and Finn knew he needed to write this stuff down. But the white chalk scratchings were just lines and curls and none of it was making any sense to Finn. He snuck another look at Rachel and she was like super focused, scribbling in her notebook. She was using her black pen, which Finn thought was strange because she always, always used her pink pen.
He looked down at his own notebook and all he had written down in his familiar clumsy large print was TURN, TURN, TURN.
He ripped the paper out of his notebook and scrunched it into a ball. The paper was hard edges digging into his skin and Finn palmed the ball before stuffing it in his bag.
When Dave Karofsky, sitting in the middle row, made some lame ass comment that had the whole class turning and groaning and Rachel was still bent over her notebook scribbling, Finn knew she was ignoring him.
The thought made his stomach turn, like the time he and Puck gorged on thirty cheeseburgers on a dare and threw up right after.
He was all prepared to ignore Rachel, to pretend that she didn’t exist, but it didn’t occur to him until now that she would do the same.
When she dashed out the class without ever turning her head, Finn’s mouth felt dry, like with the after taste of puke at the back of his throat. He gathered his stuff slowly, waving Chang off and waiting until Santana and the other Cheerios had left. He walked to the front of the room, his fingers trailing the metal on the side of Rachel’s desk. A flash of color caught Finn’s eye and then he was bending down and clutching the pink pen that must have fallen out of Rachel’s bag when she ran out of the room.
Finn spent the rest of the week with the pink pen tucked in the pocket of his jeans.
*
It was Sunday morning. 7am in fact, which was way too early to be up. Like Finn had been to enough Christ Crusaders meetings and listened to Quinn talk enough that he knew Sunday was like a day of rest. Which Finn was totally down with. Although he still wasn’t sure about the whole God thing and definitely not the whole celibacy thing. Because, like, c’mon, he was a dude and all and like Puck always said, ‘The Good Lord wouldn’t have given us balls unless we weren’t meant to use them to score.’
Although Finn guessed he wasn’t a celiabacist anymore, not since Prom.
In the end, it all came down to Prom. Prom was why Finn was up at 7am on a Sunday morning instead of resting like God intended because he had just blown a good chunk of his savings on one dinner at Chez Bon with Quinn a fortnight ago.
Luckily, he had managed to swing a job as a stock boy at the local supermarket. The pay was lousy (but at least he got paid) and he had to wake up at like 6am so that the shelves were stocked before the doors opened at 8.30am. Although Finn really didn’t know what freaky kind of person would voluntarily wake up this early on a Sunday morning.
He settled into a rhythm as he stacked the shelves. The boxes and bottles all started to look the same, to feel the same and he couldn’t tell if he was holding a bottle of pasta sauce or a box of tissues. His mind drifted but his body was still moving, grabbing the next item and placing it on the shelf, and after a while it felt kind of awesome like he was sleepwalking or something. Like maybe this was what it felt like to be a zombie only without all the blood and the killing and the guns and not being evil and all.
Finn was really starting to get into being a zombie, a good zombie with superpowers, when he grabbed the next box, turned around and rammed into the back of some person. The boxes went flying and Finn and the other person crashed onto the floor. Probably some ten year old kid, Finn guessed by the feel of the small frame underneath and the tiny fists hitting his back.
‘Gemphjoff,’ the kid said.
The voice was muffled and Finn couldn’t understand a word. He pulled himself off the floor and asked, ‘What did you say?’
‘I was trying to say get off,’ the voice wryly replied.
Finn did a slow half turn around because he knew that voice; a distinctly female voice that didn’t belong to some ten year old kid but to Rachel Berry. He saw her carefully pushing herself up using her knees and her right hand while her left hand was dusting off her skirt.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
Finn did a quick once over Rachel because he was kind of big and she was tiny and he hadn’t meant to squash her and turn her into some Berry pancake. And so okay, he may have snuck in a double check but her skirt had been riding up and her top had slipped off one shoulder revealing skin and the hint of cleavage. He snapped out of it pretty quick though when he noticed a bruise forming on her elbow.
He rushed to her side, wrapping an arm around Rachel’s waist to steady her and offering his right hand for extra support. She went to take his hand, shooting him a grateful look, before faltering.
‘Uh, Finn, you kind of have something in your hand already,’ she told him.
Rachel wasn’t looking at him when she spoke. Instead her eyes darted from him, to his hand, to the floor, to the shelves before finally settling back on his hand.
Finn looked down and a flush crept up his cheeks. His right hand was squeezing a dented box of extra durable Trojans. And scattered across the floor were boxes and boxes of condoms and somehow Finn had managed to completely tune out exactly what he had been stacking a few minutes ago.
‘This is kinda awkward,’ Finn said.
‘There is a certain element of irony to this whole situation, I suppose,’ Rachel agreed. ‘A little bit of Life’s humor smiting me.’
‘Uh, yeah,’ he said, shuffling his feet.
They stood in the middle of the aisle, Finn feeling more and more like an idiot as the seconds ticked by although for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to move away from Rachel. After a minute, he felt her spine straighten up and he could feel the way her body contracted and expanded beneath his fingertips as she took a deep breath and then wrenched herself two steps away from him.
‘Look, this doesn’t have to be awkward,’ she said. ‘In fact, it shouldn’t be awkward. We are both adults. We were two consenting adults who were responsible. And it was just a lot of harmless, safe fun. It didn’t mean anything and we can now go our separate ways.’
‘It meant something,’ Finn blurted.
He took a step forward.
‘It meant something, Rachel,’ he repeated. ‘And not just because it was my first time but because it was with you. And I don’t know what that means. Only that it means something.’
‘It was your first time too?’ Rachel whispered, wrapping her arms around her body as she spoke.
Finn nodded, taking another step forward to close the distance between them.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘What with Quinn being my girlfriend and the Celibacy and all. I’ve just never done it with anyone before. And it was special for me, Rach.’
‘Oh!’ she gasped then frowned, lines marring her face. ‘But you’re still with Quinn Fabray.’
His brow furrowed and his head hurt because Finn didn’t know how to explain everything to her.
‘That’s different,’ he insisted. ‘I mean, me and Quinn are me and Quinn. It’s confusing and all but it’s different from you and me. I like being with you, Rachel. And not just the sex, which was totally great. It’s like easy talking to you. Like you get stuff. And I hated that you wouldn’t even look at me in school.’
‘It can’t be that simple, Finn.’
‘Why can’t it be?’ he asked. ‘Look, I’m not saying that we should have sex again or whatever. Just that I like spending time with you. Like being with you makes me feel alive.’
‘Kind of like singing,’ she said.
‘Huh?’
‘When I first heard you sing, when we sang together during that first rehearsal in glee club, it made me feel alive.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ he confessed.
‘So why did you quit?’
‘Because I wasn’t ready to feel like that,’ he told her, focusing on the box of Trojans in his hand. ‘Because I was too chicken shit. Because I didn’t know that it would be the last time I felt like that until Prom night with you.’
Rachel stared at him, her eyes wide, dark and worried. It took awhile - almost felt like forever to Finn - before her mouth twitched to the smallest of smiles.
‘Okay then,’ she said, ‘I think, I guess we could try being friends?’
Finn felt his mouth slipping up into a wide grin. He liked the idea of being friends with Rachel Berry. He really liked the idea.
‘Friends is good,’ he told her. ‘Friends is really good.’
Finn’s arm twitched and he really wanted to give Rachel a hug, because friends hugged and all. Not that he ever hugged Puck or Chang or anything but they were dudes and dudes didn’t hug. But Finn was pretty sure that being friends with girls meant that you hugged like all the time. Because Brittany and Santana were like always hugging and they were girls and friends.
However when Finn’s arm started to move Rachel gave out a yelp.
‘I cannot believe it is 8.43am already!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m already behind schedule and I still have numerous items to pick up which are on the list. I have to go. I’ll see you at school.’
She backed away, her head down and all her focus on some list that she had pulled out of her bag as she power-walked down the aisle.
Finn sighed and slowly started to pick up the boxes of condoms. As he crouched down to pick up the box to his left, Finn felt something poking at him through the side of his jeans. He straightened up and dug into his pockets, pulling out a pink pen.
He sprinted to the end of the aisle.
‘Rach, wait up!’ he called.
Rachel turned, her brown hair swishing at the movement and her nose was adorably scrunched up as she shot him a quizzical look. Finn took a moment to look at her again - he had missed seeing her face for too many weeks now.
‘Here, this is yours,’ he told her, handing the pink pen over to her.
‘I’ve been looking for this for weeks,’ she breathed. ‘It’s my favorite pen. Where did you find it?’
‘You dropped it in History,’ he answered.
‘And you just happened to have it with you today, because…?’
‘Well, I snuck it into my jeans because I meant to return it to you but I just never got round to it,’ he shrugged, trying to sound casual.
Rachel saw through him anyway because the next thing Finn knew, she hurtled forward throwing her arms around him and pressing her soft, soft lips against his cheek.
‘Thank you,’ she told him before pulling away and leaving the aisle.
Finn stood at the end of the aisle, boxes of condoms scattered behind him, and a goofy smile spreading on his face. His cheek was tingling and his whole body felt energized.
This friend thing with Rachel totally rocked. Totally.
Pairings: Finn/Rachel, Finn/Quinn
Rating: R/NC-17
Disclaimer: Glee is the property of Twentieth Century Fox and affiliates and not mine.
Word Count: 3644
Spoilers: All of season 1. Although only in the loosest of sense as the story doesn’t really follow canonical history.
Summary: Finn and Rachel attempt a friendship. Sequel to At Eighteen (Come Dance With Me). Alternate History.
LOVE WAS MEANT FOR BEAUTY QUEENS
Chapter 1
On Monday morning, Finn walked down the hallways of William McKinley High. The path was always the same: up the stairs, smile at the Cheerios, turn right, pass the puckheads, high-five Jones and Chang, straight ahead and stop at the lockers.
The path was always the same but Finn didn’t feel the same today.
Okay, so he was holding a bunch of roses that he had bought at the gas station, which was like not normal; and the thorns were totally digging into his palm and painful. The kind of pain that was like hitting the ground hard when he got plowed by two linebackers; his face eating dirt and he couldn’t breathe because of the bodies crushing him. But Finn only clutched the roses tighter because he was used to working through the pain. It was all part of being the quarterback.
So he had the bunch of roses in his hand and he had stopped at a different locker, not his. He took a couple of breaths, smoothed his hair with his free hand, and straightened up.
You can do this, Hudson, he told himself. Just talk to her. But don’t say anything dumb.
She had her back to him and her small frame was buried in the locker as she pulled out her books for class. She hadn’t noticed him yet and Finn was kind of glad. He knew he had to do this but he wasn’t looking forward to her anger. He had messed up, real bad.
So he kind of waved the roses at her, because they were the only thing Finn could think of to make things right. A couple of petals went flying, a scattering of red on the floor.
‘I got you flowers,’ he said.
She turned to face him and her ponytail whipped round. His shoulders dropped and he shifted his feet when he saw her. Like he knew she would be mad and all but still kind of hoped. She was glaring at him and her mouth was a thin pursed line.
‘You ruined Senior Prom for me, Finn,’ she told him. ‘And a bunch of lame ass red roses isn’t going to make it okay.’
‘I’m sorry, okay. I was a total ass,’ he said, scuffing his shoes. Finn took to focusing on the dirt marks on his sneakers as he spoke to her - the mud was this splotchy blob against the white and it kind of looked like dog poo, which was kind of gross, so he was trying to rub it out with his heel - because he thought if he looked at her, eye to eye, that something would break.
‘Yes, you were. Prom was our night, Finn. It was meant to be special.’
‘It was special,’ Finn told her, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them.
And his eyes bugged out and he knew he was freaking, because he hadn’t meant to say that, but now the words were out there and Quinn Fabray was looking at him. Waiting. With her hands on her waist and one foot tapping.
‘It was special because, uh, you were there. Because you’re my girlfriend, Quinn. And you’re special,’ he hurried.
Finn was kind of surprised and proud that he could come up with that kind of shit without thinking. So maybe he wasn’t completely dumb. Just dumb enough to sleep…but no, Finn wasn’t going think about that because if he thought about it his brain hurt, like worse than normal, and his chest hurt and everything just hurt.
The hard line on Quinn’s mouth softened and she didn’t look like she was going to rip into him any time soon.
‘This doesn’t make it all better,’ she told him. ‘But it’s a start. We can discuss how exactly you’re going to make it up to me during homeroom.’
Finn nodded his head quickly because Quinn wasn’t being like a total bitch about the whole thing and Finn would take what he could get. Maybe Puck was right and Quinn had been on the rag during Prom night. Which kind of made Finn feel bad, like even more than he had already been.
The first bell rang and Quinn was pulling him by the sleeve as she started talking about carrying her shopping and buying her dinner at some really fancy restaurant that Finn had only ever driven by. Finn continued to nod and he was listening to Quinn, really, but his mind was kind of on how much this was going to cost him and he might need to pick up some extra shifts because his wallet was stretched from the motel room.
When his mind hit the motel room, everything kind of went still but rushing too.
Mouth. Hands. Legs. Breasts. Skin.
The feel of silky dark brown hair running through his fingers.
He turned his head, cricking his neck, and there she was. Rachel Berry.
Rachel in a red pleated skirt that bounced and made her butt look awesome and her legs like extra long, like they could go on for miles and miles. She was wearing a black top with some animal - was that a bird? - stitched on front and Finn thought she looked cute, like really really cute. She was walking fast, like marching or something, and it was like she was in total control, which was completely hot. Finn could remember what it was like for Rachel to be in control, on top of him in bed, and she knew exactly what she wanted.
She stopped walking all of a sudden, earning a couple of glares from a couple of students, and Finn knew she had seen him.
They stood in the hallway staring at each other and all he could think was that Rachel looked good with her clothes on and that Rachel looked good with her clothes off. And it was pretty much screwed up and screwed, screwing and now Finn was thinking of screwing Rachel and he was so screwed.
They stood in the hallway staring at each other; a good four or five feet away from one another. Students pushed passed him and Finn was too big and too solid so he didn’t budge but it was not like he could move anyway. The rubber soles of his shoes had like melted and he was super glued to the floor.
She was biting her lower lip and wringing her hands. Her eyes were dark, dark brown and she was staring at him with this look and his chest and brain were hurting again. Rachel’s eyes shifted to the right and her face kind of fell as she gazed at the suddenly too red, too bright roses in Quinn’s hands.
His hand kind of half lifted itself and he was thinking of maybe waving to her or something because that seemed like the thing to do. Only Quinn grabbed his hand and she was telling him how they would be late for class and he let Quinn drag him away as the second bell rang.
*
Finn had one class together with Rachel, History, which he knew she was only taking for extra credit. So Finn thought he was prepared for seeing Rachel after the almost disaster in the morning. Finn had thought real hard during homeroom when Quinn was going on and on about how lucky he was to have her as a girlfriend. And Finn got it, okay. He knew he should be grateful because he was dating Quinn Fabray and all the dudes at school would kill to be in his position or whatever. So he was just going to pretend like the whole thing with Rachel never happened, like Rachel never existed in the first place.
Only he kind of had this habit from Sophomore year, where he kept his eye out for short brunettes with amazing singing voices. And he had only kept an eye out in the first place because he had been worried that she would go all swimfan on him. But then he just kind of continued even after he left glee club, even after there was no glee club. So his eyes kind of zoomed in on Rachel during class, but it was not like it was planned or anything.
Rachel always sat at the very front with her colored pens stacked on the corner of her desk in order of black, blue, purple, pink and red.
(Finn knew the order because every class Santana would walk by Rachel flicking the pens off the desk. He couldn’t count the number of times Rachel had crouched down gathering the pens and then lining them up again at the top right hand corner of her desk, using a mirror to double check that the pens were lined exactly straight.)
Finn always sat at the back with Mike Chang, Santana and a couple of other Cheerios. Santana would bitch about everyone and Finn could normally tune her and the other Cheerios out. Mike Chang was pretty cool. Chang was a quiet dude but he had some killer moves on the field, like the way he dodged that linebacker and twisted his body was all kinds of awesome. Anyway, it meant that History was one of the few classes that Finn could normally sit at the back and mostly try and pay attention.
Except that Rachel Berry had History with him.
And he was staring at the way her back was hunched over and her shoulders were tensed and how her long brown hair, which was awesome and soft when he ran his fingers through it, was also kind of covering her face right now. His hand gripped his pen and his breath hitched every time she made the slightest of moves.
Turn, turn, turn.
She didn’t turn.
And shit, there was half a blackboard full of crap that Mr R had written down for a paper due next week and Finn knew he needed to write this stuff down. But the white chalk scratchings were just lines and curls and none of it was making any sense to Finn. He snuck another look at Rachel and she was like super focused, scribbling in her notebook. She was using her black pen, which Finn thought was strange because she always, always used her pink pen.
He looked down at his own notebook and all he had written down in his familiar clumsy large print was TURN, TURN, TURN.
He ripped the paper out of his notebook and scrunched it into a ball. The paper was hard edges digging into his skin and Finn palmed the ball before stuffing it in his bag.
When Dave Karofsky, sitting in the middle row, made some lame ass comment that had the whole class turning and groaning and Rachel was still bent over her notebook scribbling, Finn knew she was ignoring him.
The thought made his stomach turn, like the time he and Puck gorged on thirty cheeseburgers on a dare and threw up right after.
He was all prepared to ignore Rachel, to pretend that she didn’t exist, but it didn’t occur to him until now that she would do the same.
When she dashed out the class without ever turning her head, Finn’s mouth felt dry, like with the after taste of puke at the back of his throat. He gathered his stuff slowly, waving Chang off and waiting until Santana and the other Cheerios had left. He walked to the front of the room, his fingers trailing the metal on the side of Rachel’s desk. A flash of color caught Finn’s eye and then he was bending down and clutching the pink pen that must have fallen out of Rachel’s bag when she ran out of the room.
Finn spent the rest of the week with the pink pen tucked in the pocket of his jeans.
*
It was Sunday morning. 7am in fact, which was way too early to be up. Like Finn had been to enough Christ Crusaders meetings and listened to Quinn talk enough that he knew Sunday was like a day of rest. Which Finn was totally down with. Although he still wasn’t sure about the whole God thing and definitely not the whole celibacy thing. Because, like, c’mon, he was a dude and all and like Puck always said, ‘The Good Lord wouldn’t have given us balls unless we weren’t meant to use them to score.’
Although Finn guessed he wasn’t a celiabacist anymore, not since Prom.
In the end, it all came down to Prom. Prom was why Finn was up at 7am on a Sunday morning instead of resting like God intended because he had just blown a good chunk of his savings on one dinner at Chez Bon with Quinn a fortnight ago.
Luckily, he had managed to swing a job as a stock boy at the local supermarket. The pay was lousy (but at least he got paid) and he had to wake up at like 6am so that the shelves were stocked before the doors opened at 8.30am. Although Finn really didn’t know what freaky kind of person would voluntarily wake up this early on a Sunday morning.
He settled into a rhythm as he stacked the shelves. The boxes and bottles all started to look the same, to feel the same and he couldn’t tell if he was holding a bottle of pasta sauce or a box of tissues. His mind drifted but his body was still moving, grabbing the next item and placing it on the shelf, and after a while it felt kind of awesome like he was sleepwalking or something. Like maybe this was what it felt like to be a zombie only without all the blood and the killing and the guns and not being evil and all.
Finn was really starting to get into being a zombie, a good zombie with superpowers, when he grabbed the next box, turned around and rammed into the back of some person. The boxes went flying and Finn and the other person crashed onto the floor. Probably some ten year old kid, Finn guessed by the feel of the small frame underneath and the tiny fists hitting his back.
‘Gemphjoff,’ the kid said.
The voice was muffled and Finn couldn’t understand a word. He pulled himself off the floor and asked, ‘What did you say?’
‘I was trying to say get off,’ the voice wryly replied.
Finn did a slow half turn around because he knew that voice; a distinctly female voice that didn’t belong to some ten year old kid but to Rachel Berry. He saw her carefully pushing herself up using her knees and her right hand while her left hand was dusting off her skirt.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
Finn did a quick once over Rachel because he was kind of big and she was tiny and he hadn’t meant to squash her and turn her into some Berry pancake. And so okay, he may have snuck in a double check but her skirt had been riding up and her top had slipped off one shoulder revealing skin and the hint of cleavage. He snapped out of it pretty quick though when he noticed a bruise forming on her elbow.
He rushed to her side, wrapping an arm around Rachel’s waist to steady her and offering his right hand for extra support. She went to take his hand, shooting him a grateful look, before faltering.
‘Uh, Finn, you kind of have something in your hand already,’ she told him.
Rachel wasn’t looking at him when she spoke. Instead her eyes darted from him, to his hand, to the floor, to the shelves before finally settling back on his hand.
Finn looked down and a flush crept up his cheeks. His right hand was squeezing a dented box of extra durable Trojans. And scattered across the floor were boxes and boxes of condoms and somehow Finn had managed to completely tune out exactly what he had been stacking a few minutes ago.
‘This is kinda awkward,’ Finn said.
‘There is a certain element of irony to this whole situation, I suppose,’ Rachel agreed. ‘A little bit of Life’s humor smiting me.’
‘Uh, yeah,’ he said, shuffling his feet.
They stood in the middle of the aisle, Finn feeling more and more like an idiot as the seconds ticked by although for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to move away from Rachel. After a minute, he felt her spine straighten up and he could feel the way her body contracted and expanded beneath his fingertips as she took a deep breath and then wrenched herself two steps away from him.
‘Look, this doesn’t have to be awkward,’ she said. ‘In fact, it shouldn’t be awkward. We are both adults. We were two consenting adults who were responsible. And it was just a lot of harmless, safe fun. It didn’t mean anything and we can now go our separate ways.’
‘It meant something,’ Finn blurted.
He took a step forward.
‘It meant something, Rachel,’ he repeated. ‘And not just because it was my first time but because it was with you. And I don’t know what that means. Only that it means something.’
‘It was your first time too?’ Rachel whispered, wrapping her arms around her body as she spoke.
Finn nodded, taking another step forward to close the distance between them.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘What with Quinn being my girlfriend and the Celibacy and all. I’ve just never done it with anyone before. And it was special for me, Rach.’
‘Oh!’ she gasped then frowned, lines marring her face. ‘But you’re still with Quinn Fabray.’
His brow furrowed and his head hurt because Finn didn’t know how to explain everything to her.
‘That’s different,’ he insisted. ‘I mean, me and Quinn are me and Quinn. It’s confusing and all but it’s different from you and me. I like being with you, Rachel. And not just the sex, which was totally great. It’s like easy talking to you. Like you get stuff. And I hated that you wouldn’t even look at me in school.’
‘It can’t be that simple, Finn.’
‘Why can’t it be?’ he asked. ‘Look, I’m not saying that we should have sex again or whatever. Just that I like spending time with you. Like being with you makes me feel alive.’
‘Kind of like singing,’ she said.
‘Huh?’
‘When I first heard you sing, when we sang together during that first rehearsal in glee club, it made me feel alive.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ he confessed.
‘So why did you quit?’
‘Because I wasn’t ready to feel like that,’ he told her, focusing on the box of Trojans in his hand. ‘Because I was too chicken shit. Because I didn’t know that it would be the last time I felt like that until Prom night with you.’
Rachel stared at him, her eyes wide, dark and worried. It took awhile - almost felt like forever to Finn - before her mouth twitched to the smallest of smiles.
‘Okay then,’ she said, ‘I think, I guess we could try being friends?’
Finn felt his mouth slipping up into a wide grin. He liked the idea of being friends with Rachel Berry. He really liked the idea.
‘Friends is good,’ he told her. ‘Friends is really good.’
Finn’s arm twitched and he really wanted to give Rachel a hug, because friends hugged and all. Not that he ever hugged Puck or Chang or anything but they were dudes and dudes didn’t hug. But Finn was pretty sure that being friends with girls meant that you hugged like all the time. Because Brittany and Santana were like always hugging and they were girls and friends.
However when Finn’s arm started to move Rachel gave out a yelp.
‘I cannot believe it is 8.43am already!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m already behind schedule and I still have numerous items to pick up which are on the list. I have to go. I’ll see you at school.’
She backed away, her head down and all her focus on some list that she had pulled out of her bag as she power-walked down the aisle.
Finn sighed and slowly started to pick up the boxes of condoms. As he crouched down to pick up the box to his left, Finn felt something poking at him through the side of his jeans. He straightened up and dug into his pockets, pulling out a pink pen.
He sprinted to the end of the aisle.
‘Rach, wait up!’ he called.
Rachel turned, her brown hair swishing at the movement and her nose was adorably scrunched up as she shot him a quizzical look. Finn took a moment to look at her again - he had missed seeing her face for too many weeks now.
‘Here, this is yours,’ he told her, handing the pink pen over to her.
‘I’ve been looking for this for weeks,’ she breathed. ‘It’s my favorite pen. Where did you find it?’
‘You dropped it in History,’ he answered.
‘And you just happened to have it with you today, because…?’
‘Well, I snuck it into my jeans because I meant to return it to you but I just never got round to it,’ he shrugged, trying to sound casual.
Rachel saw through him anyway because the next thing Finn knew, she hurtled forward throwing her arms around him and pressing her soft, soft lips against his cheek.
‘Thank you,’ she told him before pulling away and leaving the aisle.
Finn stood at the end of the aisle, boxes of condoms scattered behind him, and a goofy smile spreading on his face. His cheek was tingling and his whole body felt energized.
This friend thing with Rachel totally rocked. Totally.