What Are You Doing (For The Rest of Your Life)?
Title: What Are You Doing (For The Rest of Your Life)?
Pairing: Finn/Rachel
Prompt: Spending Christmas and Hanukkah with their families senior year.
For:
mysticheartx
Disclaimer: Don't own.
She's walking down the hall with Quinn and Santana, which scares him. Not because he doesn't want her to have friends, but because he doesn't trust either of the other girls not to hurt Rachel in some way or another. But she's smiling and laughing and she makes Santana laugh, so like, maybe Rachel somehow reminded Santana she has a soul or something.
"Hey Rach, can I talk to you for a sec?" he asks, catching her hand. This is the first he's seen her today. He loves this dress on her. He'll tell her that when she's not giggling and pushing her hair off her face, waving to the other girls and saying she'll see them later.
"You don't have to ask to speak to me, Finn," she laughs, then puts her hand on his shoulder and tips her head back like she always does when she wants a kiss. He gives her one.
"I didn't want to interrupt, that's all."
She smiles at him and slips her fingers between his. "That's very considerate of you." He loves that thing she does where she sounds all proud of him, even for stupid things like that. "What did you want to talk about?"
"Um, I was talking to mom last night, and she..." Why is this hard? This shouldn't be hard. "She said she'd love it if you came over for Christmas dinner, since she asked if you had other plans and I said no. So um. Yeah." She's just looking at him. "Do you want to? You can say no."
"I'd love to," she says all quietly. And hey, when'd she get so close? "As you know, I'm Jewish, but my dads will support me spending the day with people I love."
Finn smiles and touches her cheek. "Cool."
"I have algebra, so..."
"Hey, wait." She giggles when he tugs her hand. "You look really pretty today."
She leans up to kiss him and Sam catcalls from across the hall, but like, whatever. "I know how much you love this dress. You don't have to tell me every time I wear it."
"Okay, fine, but I'm going to." She blushes and reaches up to wipe the gloss from his lips. "And I didn't say the dress is pretty, I said you are."
She bites her lip, which he was kind of going for. She does it when she wants him like that so yeah, he likes seeing it. "Go to class," she tells him, eyes on his as she pulls away and steps backward.
Finn just grins at her, and Blaine spins her around so she's walking straight ahead. And like, he'll just never be jealous when other people make her laugh, because he fucking loves the sound.
... ... ...
The last night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Eve, so he goes over because Rachel and her dads invited him and he and his family don't do anything special anyway. Well, they order Chinese, but that's nothing he can't miss. Rachel told him he didn't have to get dressed up or anything, but he's pretty sure he should wear something better than just jeans and a polo, so he asks Kurt for help, which pretty much just gets him laughed at.
He wears his nicest jeans - no worn spots or anything, and the denim's all dark - and a knit sweater over a white tee shirt. He doesn't look fancy or anything, but he looks good enough to like, hang out with his girlfriend's family on a religious holiday.
He thinks he should bring something, but he texts Rachel to ask and she tells him it's completely unnecessary and that her dads aren't expecting anything. She'd tell him if he had to, so he doesn't worry about it too much.
Her dad - Brian - answers the door in his khakis and grey sweater, and there's Rachel laughing in the background and Finn's already smiling. "Come on in, son."
That's the thing. He's really comfortable here, usually, and he doesn't need Rachel to answer the door and lead him around. He knows her dads pretty well, and they know him. And this one calls him son and he likes that. Rachel's other dad just calls him Finn, but that's fine. He likes it. He's spent a lot of time here. Brian just heads back into the kitchen while Finn slips off his jacket and his shoes, and he follows through once he's ready. Rachel's wearing jeans herself (she always looks super sexy, the way they hug her hips and stuff) and this red sweater she bought with him last month because she fell in love with it and it looks great on her. It's festive and everything, like a ski sweater, even though she doesn't ski.
She smiles at him and he walks over. "Hi," he says, leaning down to kiss her cheek sweetly, putting his hand on her back.
"Hi." Her legs swing out on the stool she's sitting on.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing. Dad was just saying how you and he can enjoy the brisket and daddy made a borderline inappropriate joke about how neither of you will be getting kisses for the rest of the night, if that's the case."
His cheeks are hot and her dads are looking at him. "Oh."
Her dads laugh, probably at him for blushing or something, and then Rachel looks up at him through her eyelashes and says, "I'd still kiss you. We have mouthwash."
"Stop," he hisses, and she just pulls on the front of his sweater gently so he'll lean down, and he steals a kiss while her dads aren't looking.
"We got you something."
"You said I didn't have to..."
"You didn't have to bring anything," she tells him, smiling. Her dads are looking again, and she reaches for something, and he realizes it's one of those little hats. Shit, he knows what they're called, too. He knows this. "It's a yarmulke. You don't have to wear it if you don't want to, but it's..."
"No, it's awesome. I...I'll wear it."
Honestly, the smile on Rachel's face is worth it.
And anyway, she helps him put it on in the downstairs bathroom and he thinks it looks really awesome, and she kisses him for a couple minutes while they're in there, so she probably likes it, too.
The whole Hanukkah thing is pretty cool. Her daddy speaks in Hebrew while he lights the candle, and then there's kind of this song, and then the candles are all lit together. It looks really pretty, but he doesn't say anything because he doesn't know if it's like, appropriate or whatever.
And this brisket stuff is really fucking good and so is the rest of the food. And Rachel actually kisses him goodbye at the end of the night, after they've spin the dreidel and laughed and he's had a really fun time.
He forgets to take his yarmulke off and when Kurt walks into his room as Finn's emptying his pockets, all the guy does is grin and raise his brow.
Whatever. Finn kind of likes it.
... ... ...
So, he found this like, really gorgeous ring that has a sapphire cut like a square, and he knows she loves sapphires because she told him during the summer that she was going to ask for earrings from her dads for her birthday.
She didn't get the earrings and she was kind of bummed, even if she swore him to secrecy on that. He feels bad for telling her dads he got this ring (which was a really fucking awkward conversation he legit thought he was going to pass out from) so they'd know and be able to decide on getting her the earrings, too.
It's not an engagement ring or anything, for fuck's sake. He got the size of her middle finger from her dads, who like him a lot and didn't tease him too badly when he was blushing hard and telling about his plan to get the ring he'd seen.
He just wants her to have it because she'll love it. And it'll look beautiful on her hand. And she'll think of him when she looks at it.
(He blushes even when he's alone in his room just looking at this ring and he thinks about someday slipping a diamond onto her hand.)
Anyway, Christmas morning, he's got it all wrapped and ready for when she comes over.
His mom and him never got dressed up for this day, but Kurt likes them to be civilized, so Finn pulls on a button down and black pants after they've all opened gifts and had breakfast. He got some awesome stuff from his mom and Burt, too, and money, which is great.
It really doesn't help when he's in the kitchen and his mom's doing stuff and he's just like, standing there and she goes, "Are you nervous?" in this sing songy voice that makes him want to die a little.
"Stop," he groans. "I'm not nervous. I just want her to have it. And can you guys like, attempt to be cool and not..." She turns and gives him this smile. "That smile. Don't do that."
She just laughs and reaches up to pat his cheek. "I promise I won't smile once all day." He rolls his eyes and starts to move away and she swats his arm. "Finn."
"No, like, you're all a bunch of comedians or something."
Burt walks into the kitchen and grins. "Someone's nervous."
Finn groans and leaves the room, heads back upstairs, but not before hearing his mom actually tell Burt to like, not embarrass him.
He needs to do something to pass the time, so he fires up his Playstation so he can do a little racing on Gran Tourismo before Rachel comes over. And he's doing pretty well with his kick ass Aston Martin (fuck Puck because this car is awesome and he loves it) but then Kurt comes in and puts this flowery box of Kleenex on the foot of Finn's bed, and like...
"Um."
"For when she cries," Kurt says, like it's just a fact that she will.
"She's not going to cry," he insists, not even pausing his game or looking away from the television this time.
But then, like, it's Rachel, and he bought her a CD she'd told him she wanted once and she teared up because she was so flattered he'd not only been listening when she talked, but that he thought of her when he saw it.
So he pauses his game and looks up at Kurt, who's just staring at him.
"She's totally gonna cry." Kurt nods. "Shit."
"Don't worry," Kurt says, and Finn's not all that mad at him for laughing. "I have mascara in my bathroom and I know she carries pressed powder with her in her handbag. She'll be fine."
"Cool," Finn sighs, relieved. "Dude, why do you have mascara in your bathroom?"
Kurt rolls his eyes like Finn's an idiot or something, but doesn't explain himself before leaving the room.
... ... ...
He runs for the door when the bell rings, because he doesn't trust Kurt not to answer it and like, steal her away so those two can exchange gifts first. And sure, she'll probably like the Playbill Kurt made in Photoshop and had printed at this local print shop. It's the two of them and every spread is like, a page for her and a page for him in different shows they want to be in someday, with biographies and quotes and stuff. The pictures are awesome and Kurt did a great job. Rachel will love it.
But Finn bought her a ring, so.
He kisses her before he takes her coat, and she's got a box wrapped in her handbag, which he's pretty excited over. She looks really pretty, too, so he tells her she's beautiful and smiles when she blushes. They head through to the kitchen just to say hello to his mom and Burt, because they'll exchange gifts with her after. Like, after she gets his awesome one.
So they go upstairs, and she pulls the wrapped box from her bag and sits down on his bed - he made it and everything - with it on her lap. He can tell she's wondering where her present is, even if she'd never ask because she thinks it's rude.
This probably is, too, but, "Can I open mine first?" he asks, and Rachel laughs and smiles at him and says, "Of course you can."
He peels the paper off the box and opens it, tossing the wrapping paper and the lid onto the floor of his bedroom. Whatever. He'll pick it up later. There's tissue inside the box, so he pulls that away, too, and then there's this book inside that he can see she actually made, and he lifts it up and pushes the box onto the floor.
The front has on it, written in her pretty writing, 'Until you find yourself, it's impossible to lose you'.
"Rachel."
"Open it," she tells him, gently, and she's got this look on her face that he wants to kiss.
He opens the cover, and the first page is a long paragraph that he's too excited to read right now, but right above it there's a picture of the two of them from this summer, when they were driving around in his truck and she snapped a picture of the two of them. He's not even looking at the camera, since he was, you know, driving, but she looks all pretty and happy with her head on his shoulder like that.
The next page is a map of their part of Ohio, and there's a CD in a sleeve that has a bunch of song names written on it.
They watched this movie together forever ago and this girl made this guy this awesome map, and Finn said how cool it was, kind of in passing, as they watched.
He's thinking this has a lot more to do with the fact that he's been saying he'd love to go on a road trip this summer, a few weeks or maybe a month or something, and just like, completely do what he wants and not have to stress about anything. It's not like he wouldn't want her coming with him - he'd love that, actually, but they haven't talked about that.
"Is this..."
"There are three different routes," she tells him, and he just looks at her, then turns to the next page. There's another picture of them and some more writing and another map. "One takes you all across the country, one takes you through the south, and the other takes you out to Seattle and back."
"Rachel." He kind of can't breathe. He keeps looking through it, though, like, as if it could get any more amazing than it already is.
Then she puts her hand on his cheek and says, quietly, "All three routes end in New York," and looks at him with these eyes he can't even begin to describe.
He kisses her, hard, and he doesn't want to hurt his map book or anything, so he sets it on the bed so he can touch her with both hands, and he just kisses her because he loves her so much it's insane, and she's the best girlfriend ever. She's the best girl ever. The best person.
"I love you," he tells her. "I love it. You're..."
Shit. He might need a tissue himself.
"If you're serious about this trip, I want you to be prepared," she says, and he shakes his head because she's amazing. "And um. The CDs are ridiculously well thought-out, if I may say so." He laughs, but like, of course they are. "But you can't listen to them unless you take the trip, so."
"You really...You want me to go?"
She shrugs one shoulder and brushes her thumb over his cheek. "I want you to be happy, and I think this trip would...I think you would learn so much about yourself if you did it."
He just looks at her. "You're so fucking amazing."
She giggles, but he knows she doesn't like cursing. She must have been okay with that one.
But god, it must have taken her ages to finish this, and all he did was buy her a ring.
"Um." He reaches over to his bedside drawer and pulls out the little box that feels really tiny in his hand. Rachel's eyes are wide when he looks at her, and she's staring at his hand. "You should just open it."
"Okay."
She takes it from him when he hands it to her, and he can tell she's trying not to rip the paper off as quickly as she wants to. Finn just smiles and watches as she opens the cardboard box to get to the velvet one inside. She lets her eyes flick up to his and she's breathing really hard.
Then she opens the box and immediately gasps, as if she didn't know what it was already. But yeah, the ring is really, really pretty. He's spent a lot of time looking at it.
Then she takes it out of the box and slips it onto the middle finger of her left hand, as if she somehow knew that's exactly where he wanted it to go. And she throws her arms around him and nearly like, falls off the bed, and he kind of laughs as he holds her.
"You got me a ring."
"It's..."
"A sapphire."
"Um."
"It's beautiful, Finn. My god." He laughs a bit and then she's kissing his face and then his mouth and he can feel the ring when she slips her fingers between his, and he hasn't even really gotten a chance to see it on her, but like, this is good too. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," he says, even if he doesn't feel like she had to thank him.
She pulls away and stares at her hand while she wipes her face with her right one. He grabs a tissue and dabs at her cheeks, then looks down at her hand, too, and she's just shaking her head.
"I love you. You know that, right?" she asks, and like, yeah, he knows, so he nods and leans in to kiss her. "We're perfect."
"Yeah," he says, smiling, and lets his thumb swipe another tear away. "Stop crying, babe."
"I will. Give me a minute," she giggles.
Once she's composed, she goes across to Kurt's room to get her present from him, but she grabs Finn's hand and his new favourite thing of life is pushing her ring with his thumb when he's holding her hand, so. He sits there while Kurt and Rachel exchange gifts. She got him some vinyl album of something Finn's never heard of, but Kurt loses his shit over it, and Rachel cries again when she sees the Playbill.
But then Kurt's grabbing her hand to look at the ring on her finger, and Finn feels like the man when Kurt says how beautiful it looks on her.
Then when they get downstairs, Finn's mom and Burt both comment on how the ring suits her and she says how much she loves it, and when they're eating dinner, Finn keeps catching her touching it with her thumb, too. It kind of goes straight to his heart any time he sees her doing it.
They all sit down to talk in the living room and eat pie, and Rachel's left hand sits just above his knee while they talk, and he basically can't stop smiling, but it doesn't look like she can either.
So yeah. Finn totally wins Christmas.
Pairing: Finn/Rachel
Prompt: Spending Christmas and Hanukkah with their families senior year.
For:
mysticheartx
Disclaimer: Don't own.
She's walking down the hall with Quinn and Santana, which scares him. Not because he doesn't want her to have friends, but because he doesn't trust either of the other girls not to hurt Rachel in some way or another. But she's smiling and laughing and she makes Santana laugh, so like, maybe Rachel somehow reminded Santana she has a soul or something.
"Hey Rach, can I talk to you for a sec?" he asks, catching her hand. This is the first he's seen her today. He loves this dress on her. He'll tell her that when she's not giggling and pushing her hair off her face, waving to the other girls and saying she'll see them later.
"You don't have to ask to speak to me, Finn," she laughs, then puts her hand on his shoulder and tips her head back like she always does when she wants a kiss. He gives her one.
"I didn't want to interrupt, that's all."
She smiles at him and slips her fingers between his. "That's very considerate of you." He loves that thing she does where she sounds all proud of him, even for stupid things like that. "What did you want to talk about?"
"Um, I was talking to mom last night, and she..." Why is this hard? This shouldn't be hard. "She said she'd love it if you came over for Christmas dinner, since she asked if you had other plans and I said no. So um. Yeah." She's just looking at him. "Do you want to? You can say no."
"I'd love to," she says all quietly. And hey, when'd she get so close? "As you know, I'm Jewish, but my dads will support me spending the day with people I love."
Finn smiles and touches her cheek. "Cool."
"I have algebra, so..."
"Hey, wait." She giggles when he tugs her hand. "You look really pretty today."
She leans up to kiss him and Sam catcalls from across the hall, but like, whatever. "I know how much you love this dress. You don't have to tell me every time I wear it."
"Okay, fine, but I'm going to." She blushes and reaches up to wipe the gloss from his lips. "And I didn't say the dress is pretty, I said you are."
She bites her lip, which he was kind of going for. She does it when she wants him like that so yeah, he likes seeing it. "Go to class," she tells him, eyes on his as she pulls away and steps backward.
Finn just grins at her, and Blaine spins her around so she's walking straight ahead. And like, he'll just never be jealous when other people make her laugh, because he fucking loves the sound.
... ... ...
The last night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Eve, so he goes over because Rachel and her dads invited him and he and his family don't do anything special anyway. Well, they order Chinese, but that's nothing he can't miss. Rachel told him he didn't have to get dressed up or anything, but he's pretty sure he should wear something better than just jeans and a polo, so he asks Kurt for help, which pretty much just gets him laughed at.
He wears his nicest jeans - no worn spots or anything, and the denim's all dark - and a knit sweater over a white tee shirt. He doesn't look fancy or anything, but he looks good enough to like, hang out with his girlfriend's family on a religious holiday.
He thinks he should bring something, but he texts Rachel to ask and she tells him it's completely unnecessary and that her dads aren't expecting anything. She'd tell him if he had to, so he doesn't worry about it too much.
Her dad - Brian - answers the door in his khakis and grey sweater, and there's Rachel laughing in the background and Finn's already smiling. "Come on in, son."
That's the thing. He's really comfortable here, usually, and he doesn't need Rachel to answer the door and lead him around. He knows her dads pretty well, and they know him. And this one calls him son and he likes that. Rachel's other dad just calls him Finn, but that's fine. He likes it. He's spent a lot of time here. Brian just heads back into the kitchen while Finn slips off his jacket and his shoes, and he follows through once he's ready. Rachel's wearing jeans herself (she always looks super sexy, the way they hug her hips and stuff) and this red sweater she bought with him last month because she fell in love with it and it looks great on her. It's festive and everything, like a ski sweater, even though she doesn't ski.
She smiles at him and he walks over. "Hi," he says, leaning down to kiss her cheek sweetly, putting his hand on her back.
"Hi." Her legs swing out on the stool she's sitting on.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing. Dad was just saying how you and he can enjoy the brisket and daddy made a borderline inappropriate joke about how neither of you will be getting kisses for the rest of the night, if that's the case."
His cheeks are hot and her dads are looking at him. "Oh."
Her dads laugh, probably at him for blushing or something, and then Rachel looks up at him through her eyelashes and says, "I'd still kiss you. We have mouthwash."
"Stop," he hisses, and she just pulls on the front of his sweater gently so he'll lean down, and he steals a kiss while her dads aren't looking.
"We got you something."
"You said I didn't have to..."
"You didn't have to bring anything," she tells him, smiling. Her dads are looking again, and she reaches for something, and he realizes it's one of those little hats. Shit, he knows what they're called, too. He knows this. "It's a yarmulke. You don't have to wear it if you don't want to, but it's..."
"No, it's awesome. I...I'll wear it."
Honestly, the smile on Rachel's face is worth it.
And anyway, she helps him put it on in the downstairs bathroom and he thinks it looks really awesome, and she kisses him for a couple minutes while they're in there, so she probably likes it, too.
The whole Hanukkah thing is pretty cool. Her daddy speaks in Hebrew while he lights the candle, and then there's kind of this song, and then the candles are all lit together. It looks really pretty, but he doesn't say anything because he doesn't know if it's like, appropriate or whatever.
And this brisket stuff is really fucking good and so is the rest of the food. And Rachel actually kisses him goodbye at the end of the night, after they've spin the dreidel and laughed and he's had a really fun time.
He forgets to take his yarmulke off and when Kurt walks into his room as Finn's emptying his pockets, all the guy does is grin and raise his brow.
Whatever. Finn kind of likes it.
... ... ...
So, he found this like, really gorgeous ring that has a sapphire cut like a square, and he knows she loves sapphires because she told him during the summer that she was going to ask for earrings from her dads for her birthday.
She didn't get the earrings and she was kind of bummed, even if she swore him to secrecy on that. He feels bad for telling her dads he got this ring (which was a really fucking awkward conversation he legit thought he was going to pass out from) so they'd know and be able to decide on getting her the earrings, too.
It's not an engagement ring or anything, for fuck's sake. He got the size of her middle finger from her dads, who like him a lot and didn't tease him too badly when he was blushing hard and telling about his plan to get the ring he'd seen.
He just wants her to have it because she'll love it. And it'll look beautiful on her hand. And she'll think of him when she looks at it.
(He blushes even when he's alone in his room just looking at this ring and he thinks about someday slipping a diamond onto her hand.)
Anyway, Christmas morning, he's got it all wrapped and ready for when she comes over.
His mom and him never got dressed up for this day, but Kurt likes them to be civilized, so Finn pulls on a button down and black pants after they've all opened gifts and had breakfast. He got some awesome stuff from his mom and Burt, too, and money, which is great.
It really doesn't help when he's in the kitchen and his mom's doing stuff and he's just like, standing there and she goes, "Are you nervous?" in this sing songy voice that makes him want to die a little.
"Stop," he groans. "I'm not nervous. I just want her to have it. And can you guys like, attempt to be cool and not..." She turns and gives him this smile. "That smile. Don't do that."
She just laughs and reaches up to pat his cheek. "I promise I won't smile once all day." He rolls his eyes and starts to move away and she swats his arm. "Finn."
"No, like, you're all a bunch of comedians or something."
Burt walks into the kitchen and grins. "Someone's nervous."
Finn groans and leaves the room, heads back upstairs, but not before hearing his mom actually tell Burt to like, not embarrass him.
He needs to do something to pass the time, so he fires up his Playstation so he can do a little racing on Gran Tourismo before Rachel comes over. And he's doing pretty well with his kick ass Aston Martin (fuck Puck because this car is awesome and he loves it) but then Kurt comes in and puts this flowery box of Kleenex on the foot of Finn's bed, and like...
"Um."
"For when she cries," Kurt says, like it's just a fact that she will.
"She's not going to cry," he insists, not even pausing his game or looking away from the television this time.
But then, like, it's Rachel, and he bought her a CD she'd told him she wanted once and she teared up because she was so flattered he'd not only been listening when she talked, but that he thought of her when he saw it.
So he pauses his game and looks up at Kurt, who's just staring at him.
"She's totally gonna cry." Kurt nods. "Shit."
"Don't worry," Kurt says, and Finn's not all that mad at him for laughing. "I have mascara in my bathroom and I know she carries pressed powder with her in her handbag. She'll be fine."
"Cool," Finn sighs, relieved. "Dude, why do you have mascara in your bathroom?"
Kurt rolls his eyes like Finn's an idiot or something, but doesn't explain himself before leaving the room.
... ... ...
He runs for the door when the bell rings, because he doesn't trust Kurt not to answer it and like, steal her away so those two can exchange gifts first. And sure, she'll probably like the Playbill Kurt made in Photoshop and had printed at this local print shop. It's the two of them and every spread is like, a page for her and a page for him in different shows they want to be in someday, with biographies and quotes and stuff. The pictures are awesome and Kurt did a great job. Rachel will love it.
But Finn bought her a ring, so.
He kisses her before he takes her coat, and she's got a box wrapped in her handbag, which he's pretty excited over. She looks really pretty, too, so he tells her she's beautiful and smiles when she blushes. They head through to the kitchen just to say hello to his mom and Burt, because they'll exchange gifts with her after. Like, after she gets his awesome one.
So they go upstairs, and she pulls the wrapped box from her bag and sits down on his bed - he made it and everything - with it on her lap. He can tell she's wondering where her present is, even if she'd never ask because she thinks it's rude.
This probably is, too, but, "Can I open mine first?" he asks, and Rachel laughs and smiles at him and says, "Of course you can."
He peels the paper off the box and opens it, tossing the wrapping paper and the lid onto the floor of his bedroom. Whatever. He'll pick it up later. There's tissue inside the box, so he pulls that away, too, and then there's this book inside that he can see she actually made, and he lifts it up and pushes the box onto the floor.
The front has on it, written in her pretty writing, 'Until you find yourself, it's impossible to lose you'.
"Rachel."
"Open it," she tells him, gently, and she's got this look on her face that he wants to kiss.
He opens the cover, and the first page is a long paragraph that he's too excited to read right now, but right above it there's a picture of the two of them from this summer, when they were driving around in his truck and she snapped a picture of the two of them. He's not even looking at the camera, since he was, you know, driving, but she looks all pretty and happy with her head on his shoulder like that.
The next page is a map of their part of Ohio, and there's a CD in a sleeve that has a bunch of song names written on it.
They watched this movie together forever ago and this girl made this guy this awesome map, and Finn said how cool it was, kind of in passing, as they watched.
He's thinking this has a lot more to do with the fact that he's been saying he'd love to go on a road trip this summer, a few weeks or maybe a month or something, and just like, completely do what he wants and not have to stress about anything. It's not like he wouldn't want her coming with him - he'd love that, actually, but they haven't talked about that.
"Is this..."
"There are three different routes," she tells him, and he just looks at her, then turns to the next page. There's another picture of them and some more writing and another map. "One takes you all across the country, one takes you through the south, and the other takes you out to Seattle and back."
"Rachel." He kind of can't breathe. He keeps looking through it, though, like, as if it could get any more amazing than it already is.
Then she puts her hand on his cheek and says, quietly, "All three routes end in New York," and looks at him with these eyes he can't even begin to describe.
He kisses her, hard, and he doesn't want to hurt his map book or anything, so he sets it on the bed so he can touch her with both hands, and he just kisses her because he loves her so much it's insane, and she's the best girlfriend ever. She's the best girl ever. The best person.
"I love you," he tells her. "I love it. You're..."
Shit. He might need a tissue himself.
"If you're serious about this trip, I want you to be prepared," she says, and he shakes his head because she's amazing. "And um. The CDs are ridiculously well thought-out, if I may say so." He laughs, but like, of course they are. "But you can't listen to them unless you take the trip, so."
"You really...You want me to go?"
She shrugs one shoulder and brushes her thumb over his cheek. "I want you to be happy, and I think this trip would...I think you would learn so much about yourself if you did it."
He just looks at her. "You're so fucking amazing."
She giggles, but he knows she doesn't like cursing. She must have been okay with that one.
But god, it must have taken her ages to finish this, and all he did was buy her a ring.
"Um." He reaches over to his bedside drawer and pulls out the little box that feels really tiny in his hand. Rachel's eyes are wide when he looks at her, and she's staring at his hand. "You should just open it."
"Okay."
She takes it from him when he hands it to her, and he can tell she's trying not to rip the paper off as quickly as she wants to. Finn just smiles and watches as she opens the cardboard box to get to the velvet one inside. She lets her eyes flick up to his and she's breathing really hard.
Then she opens the box and immediately gasps, as if she didn't know what it was already. But yeah, the ring is really, really pretty. He's spent a lot of time looking at it.
Then she takes it out of the box and slips it onto the middle finger of her left hand, as if she somehow knew that's exactly where he wanted it to go. And she throws her arms around him and nearly like, falls off the bed, and he kind of laughs as he holds her.
"You got me a ring."
"It's..."
"A sapphire."
"Um."
"It's beautiful, Finn. My god." He laughs a bit and then she's kissing his face and then his mouth and he can feel the ring when she slips her fingers between his, and he hasn't even really gotten a chance to see it on her, but like, this is good too. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," he says, even if he doesn't feel like she had to thank him.
She pulls away and stares at her hand while she wipes her face with her right one. He grabs a tissue and dabs at her cheeks, then looks down at her hand, too, and she's just shaking her head.
"I love you. You know that, right?" she asks, and like, yeah, he knows, so he nods and leans in to kiss her. "We're perfect."
"Yeah," he says, smiling, and lets his thumb swipe another tear away. "Stop crying, babe."
"I will. Give me a minute," she giggles.
Once she's composed, she goes across to Kurt's room to get her present from him, but she grabs Finn's hand and his new favourite thing of life is pushing her ring with his thumb when he's holding her hand, so. He sits there while Kurt and Rachel exchange gifts. She got him some vinyl album of something Finn's never heard of, but Kurt loses his shit over it, and Rachel cries again when she sees the Playbill.
But then Kurt's grabbing her hand to look at the ring on her finger, and Finn feels like the man when Kurt says how beautiful it looks on her.
Then when they get downstairs, Finn's mom and Burt both comment on how the ring suits her and she says how much she loves it, and when they're eating dinner, Finn keeps catching her touching it with her thumb, too. It kind of goes straight to his heart any time he sees her doing it.
They all sit down to talk in the living room and eat pie, and Rachel's left hand sits just above his knee while they talk, and he basically can't stop smiling, but it doesn't look like she can either.
So yeah. Finn totally wins Christmas.