When We Both Let It Go [4/7]
Title: When We Both Let It Go
Chapter: 4/7
Rating: R
Pairing: Finn/Rachel
Summary: He wants her to see how hard he's working to be something. It's supposed to make her proud of him, the Army thing. And plus, he really wanted her to see his progress so that maybe she could admit he's doing something good. For them.
Word Count: 7,600
Disclaimer: Don't own.
"I need to tell you something," Rachel says one day, when Michael is sitting on his sofa, editing photos on his laptop, and she's reading a book she's borrowed from Quinn.
In the book, the main couple has just gotten engaged, and she starts feeling guilty that she's never told him about what is essentially her only relationship, prior to this one.
And this is a relationship. He calls her his girlfriend, and he's her boyfriend, and last week when his brother was in town from Philadelphia for a conference, they all had dinner together. Santana and Quinn have met him, and he's passed their 'test'. (Which basically means that, to Santana, he's hot enough for Rachel, and to Quinn, he's sweet enough.) They spend a great deal of their spare time together, and she took him to see a revival of one of her favourite musicals, and she went with him to a photographer friend's show at a gallery in Queens.
She's very comfortable with the way things are going. He treats her amazingly well, and she must say, dating an older man is wonderful. He's mature and has a stable life, and he seems to know how to take care of her, even when she doesn't ask him to.
And she loves that he's the kind of man who, when his girlfriend says those words, simply replies, "Okay," and gives her his attention.
He's confident, and secure, and he trusts her when she says she likes him as much as she does. The only reason she's telling him this is because he deserves to know, not because she wants him to doubt anything between them.
"I was engaged," she says, sort of quietly, and then waits for his reaction. Which is for him to just stare at her like he can't quite comprehend this.
"What, were you like 16?" He's smiling the slightest bit, and she knows this is a shock to him, so she's not mad at him for that comment.
"18," she corrects, and he tilts his head. "We were very in love, and...He was my high school sweetheart, and essentially my first everything." He nods, almost like he understands. She looks down at her lap. "My only, where some things are concerned, until you."
He says, "Oh," like this is a complete shock to him.
"He broke up with me on what was supposed to be our wedding day." She hears his muttered curse, but continues on anyway. "And put me on a train to New York, and I just...I thought you should know."
"So this was, what? Three years ago?" he asks, and she nods her head and looks at him through her lashes for any signs of him being angry or bothered by this. He's smiling. "Three years and...And you picked me?"
"Michael," she laughs quietly. "That's not..."
His hand slides up her calf, over her knee and onto her thigh, then the tips of his fingers are brushing the edge of her panties under her dress as he leans over her.
He says, "You could have anyone," against her lips, and she doesn't correct him.
(Not anyone.)
The book she's been reading falls to the floor, forgotten, and maybe he's right about some things, though. She waited three years and never found anyone suitable until him. Maybe there's something special about that.
... ... ...
He gets word that one of the guys he was in basic with was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, and he doesn't know how to fucking process this. Like, he had conversations with this guy, about family and the Army and life, and now he's just gone, and Finn can't even go to his funeral or do anything. The guy had a kid, too, a four year old boy who'd be, what, seven, eight by now? And now has to grow up without a dad.
It's not fucking fair and Finn hates everything right now.
Meagan's been gone a month and a half, and he really, really misses her. If she was here, she'd know what to say to make him feel better. She's so good with stuff like that. But now, with the time difference and everything, he can hardly ever even catch her online, and if he emails her, he doesn't get anything back for like a day and a half. He's not mad at her for that, and it's not her fault or his, it's just hard, being with someone long distance and wanting to talk to them and not being able to. And this is coming from someone who's had a hell of a lot of practice with that.
Some asshole picks the wrong fucking day to bust Finn's balls about his relationship with Meagan now that she's back in the States. They're at the gym and this guy Finn's never even really liked starts talking shit and asking how he and Meagan 'keep in touch' or whatever. There're lewd hand gestures and filthy words, and Finn lunges at him, only to be held back by two guys who've been watching this whole scene go down. They actually sort of save his ass because he's got a spotless record he's actually really proud of, and he doesn't want to fuck that up over some idiot who can't keep his fucking mouth closed.
"Hudson," his buddy Cohen calls after him after he's left the gym and is on his way home. "What's with you?"
"You heard him." Yeah, he keeps walking. He's not in the mood for a heart to heart.
"Hey," Cohen says harshly, and jogs so he's in front of Finn, then puts his hand on his shoulder to stop him. Finn just looks at him darkly. "Get your shit together, man."
"I don't need this right now."
"Yeah, you do." Finn rolls his eyes and Cohen shoves his shoulder the slightest bit, just to get his attention. "I remember you when you first came here. You're that guy again."
"What are you talking about?" he asks, shaking his head.
Cohen laughs a bit. "Don't try that shit on me. I'm not as dumb as I look. You were miserable." Finn just stares. "So whatever was going on then, or whatever's going on now...You just got put up for promotion, dude. Don't fuck it up."
Finn sighs. His buddy is right. He really can't afford to slip now. He needs to keep on top of things and be the soldier he always was. Making Specialist will put him in the next pay bracket, and he wouldn't hate that at all. He just needs to keep his nose down and do the work like he always has, and maybe he'll actually be able to do something here. He's already in such good standing that he's working his way through the system, talking to different people who're actually listening to him about his dad's discharge status, and considering that was one of his main motivations for being in the Army at all, he needs to follow through on it. He can't lose momentum or credibility now.
He goes home and checks his email, and there's something there from Meagan, but there's something from Puck, too.
Reading that apparently Rachel's in a relationship with some guy in New York is really, really not what he needed right now.
He can't be mad about it. He can't be mad at her, and he can't be too upset about it, either. He left her. He told her he'd let her go so she could live her life and do everything he knew she'd do. He hasn't thought much about her being with other people, because it's one of those things he just...
He just remembers it, the way she's told him she loved him the last two times she saw him. Tears and intensity and all that.
And yeah, he's with someone else, and he should feel like an asshole about it, but it's not even a shock to him to realize that Megan's I love yous don't mean as much as Rachel's did. Do.
He doesn't bother reading Megan's email. He just sets his alarm so he can get up early in the morning in hopes of catching the guy in that office in Texas who he needs to get in touch with about his dad.
He has his own agenda, too. No Rachel, no Meagan, no one has anything to do with it.
But still, he thinks about how he has all this to accomplish, how he told Rachel that, and that maybe someday...
Either she never believed him at all, or she stopped believing him because he's taking too long, or because he hurt her when he left or when he got a girlfriend or whatever.
It feels like she's given up on him, on them.
It's hard to sleep.
... ... ...
She lands the lead in NYADA's production. She's not entirely surprised, but it's still a thrill, and she still cries when they tell her, and she's still proud that she's going to finally have a chance to perform Don't Cry For Me Argentina to a packed house.
However, between her rehearsal schedule and her course load, she really has hardly any time at all to spend with her boyfriend or her friends. Quinn comes in for a weekend and stays with Santana, and Rachel only has the time to get lunch with them once, because she's got a 12 hour rehearsal, and a monologue to learn for one of her classes before Monday.
Michael presses her up against the door to her apartment when she lets him in, pushes down her pajama pants and slips inside her, says, "Before you can tell me you don't have time." It makes her laugh, and it feels amazing, and the high she gets from her orgasm(s) makes her feel more relaxed than she has in days.
Her fathers, of course, come in for opening night, and she's been so preoccupied that she didn't even really consider that they'll be meeting her boyfriend for the first time. She doesn't have time to think about it, either, just tells Santana and Quinn to run interference and not let Michael sit next to either of her dads in the theatre, where they're surely going to cry as they watch her.
There are agents, managers, casting directors, choreographers, and directors in the audience. Playwrights, too, likely. She cannot afford to mess this up. She may be a touch dramatic, but when she says that her entire career rides on this performance of this show, this night, she's not wrong. If she messes up, or chokes, her chances of working in this or any other theatre city will be cut down considerably.
She knows the book front and back, and she's been singing the songs since she was a child. She puts a bit of her own personality into her performance, and, at one point, sees Carmen standing in the wings shaking her head and smiling, like Rachel is...
"Remarkable," Carmen says, hugging Rachel tightly after the curtain has come down and the crowd is still roaring.
She just got her first standing ovation in New York City. She gets her second on her curtain call, and there are so many flowers being handed to her that she can't carry them all. She's so overwhelmed she just wants to cry.
After her fathers have gone back to Lima - after admitting that they love Michael, which surprises her only because they've been wary all along of the age difference - Michael shows her a photo he took of her during her performance. It's her, center stage, singing in front of a set of microphones. The composition of the photo is flawless, though she shouldn't have expected anything less. He's a brilliant photographer.
He's framed it, an 8x10, and he carries it home for her, hangs it on her wall in her apartment, between a picture of she and her fathers and a picture of she and her glee club at Nationals.
And that night, when they're in her bed and he's playing with her hair and she's just about lulled to sleep by it, his voice is in her ear, quiet, but sure.
"Don't you ever doubt yourself," he says, and her eyes stay closed, but her heart races. "You're a star."
Tears slip from her eyes and onto the pillow.
Someone else told her that first.
... ... ...
He's officially Corporal Finn Hudson of the U.S. Army, and he's packing up his things because his new post is actually back at Fort Leonard Wood as an NCO, helping to train new MPs. When they gave him the post, they told him it's because he's been an exemplary soldier and MP and the Army wants more like him.
Honestly, it feels really good. His hard work's paying off and he likes it, seeing results and being acknowledged for what he does.
He's single, though. Honestly, it doesn't feel much different now than it has since Meagan left Germany. She basically just called him out one day, when they actually got to talk on the phone for the first time in weeks, and asked if he even wanted to bother trying to stay together. He didn't want to lie to her and couldn't, and honestly...Well, he doesn't want to say he stopped caring about whether or not they stayed together, but the idea of not being with her didn't hurt anymore. Hearing her cry sucked, and realizing she'd probably known all along that she was more invested in it than he was didn't feel all that great either, but he can't help it.
It's not her fault - or his, really - that at least half his heart already belongs to someone else.
He's got two weeks' leave before he has to be on base.
He finds himself in New York. It's partly his fault and partly not, but he's not getting into all that, because he's in New York, and so is she, and fuck, the first night he's there, he gets drunk in a bar in Manhattan (gets free drinks all night because he's got a set of dog tags around his neck and an Army tee shirt on) and tries to justify how he's still kind of fucking obsessed with her, almost four years later.
Four years.
He put her on a train to New York and she never came back. She said she wouldn't. He should have believed her. She's almost done school. It's March and it's her senior year and then she'll be graduated, and he hopes to god she's doing everything he's imagined her doing. She wants it all so bad that he can't picture her not going after it. She's probably blowing people away on a daily basis with how talented she is.
He hangs out, a bit, near her apartment, and he doesn't know if he'll have either the nerve to go and talk to her, or the self-restraint not to. Fuck, he doesn't even know if she actually still lives here. He just sort of people watches from across the street, sips a cup of bad coffee and watches the time, because he's got a bus to catch back to Ohio.
It's an hour before he sees her. She's walking down the street in boots and jeans and a jacket and a bright pink scarf around her neck, her long hair blowing around in the wind.
And she's not alone, and seeing her holding hands with this guy makes Finn's heart feel completely fucking destroyed. She's laughing and he's got her keys in his hand, unlocks the door to the building and holds it open so she can go inside.
She was so wrapped up in this guy that she didn't even notice anyone else around. It's a narrow street and he wasn't even all that far from her. Close enough to notice that she still wears that silver ring on her right hand, and to hear that she still laughs the same.
He keeps his sunglasses over his eyes the entire bus trip to Ohio, claims jet lag and falls asleep two hours after arriving at his mom and Burt's place. He sleeps too long and when he wakes up, it's the middle of the night and he's starving, so he goes downstairs and pulls a few things out of the fridge to make a sandwich.
His mom must hear him, though. She comes downstairs in her pajamas and bathrobe and sits down at the table while he makes his food.
"Did you find what you were looking for in New York?" she asks, and he knows she knows that Rachel's with someone else, and fuck, he feels really pathetic for hanging on like this.
"I never do," he answers, and she says his name. He turns around to look at her. He must look devastated or something like that, because she's never, ever been able to hide when she's feeling all the same pain he is, for him. "She's in love with someone else, mom."
"You were, too, honey."
He laughs a bit, humourlessly, and shakes his head. "Not really."
He sits down, his food forgotten, and she moves her chair a little closer to his so she can slip her arm around his shoulder as he sits with his head in his hands.
"Maybe she isn't, either," she says carefully.
He shakes his head. "You didn't see them. She's..."
He feels fucking stupid for feeling like crying, but they've never felt over to him, not until right now, when he's admitting it out loud that she's really moved on.
"Finn."
"I love her," he says, too quietly, and fuck, it feels good to say it, but it sucks that it's still true.
Because if it's still true four years later, it's always going to fucking be true, and he'll never have her, and he'll just be some broken guy with half a heart to give to a woman who'll settle for it.
His trip home is filled with surprises. Well, not filled, but he gets two really cool ones.
He opens the door and Puck's standing there on the other side of it, and they hug so hard Finn's back actually pops. It's just really good to see his best friend, and he's not too proud to say that even with all the guys he's met in the Army, none of them are as good a friend to him as Puck is.
"Jesus," Puck says, standing there in the foyer of Finn's house. He keeps his hands on Finn's shoulders and looks at him for a second. "You're a fucking beast." Finn's mom, standing behind him, laughs a bit. "Sorry, Mrs. H."
"It's okay, Noah," she says, and collects her hug, too.
So he and Puck literally just fuck around for a couple days, drinking and swapping stories back and forth. Puck's been working full time as a studio's session guitarist for a while now, and apparently there's a chance he could be in line to do a tour with this 'marginally popular' singer/songwriter who wants a strong guitar player who can sing backup. It's really cool, actually, and Finn's excited for him.
Then they're out on a beer run and they're standing there trying to decide if they should get some whiskey, too, and in walks Quinn Fabray, who looks right at them both, lets out this little squeal thing, and sort of skips over to them. She hugs them both at once and starts talking all fast. Apparently she's home for spring break and so bored in this town that she was going to get a bottle of wine and just drink that to entertain herself.
"Well, darlin'," Puck says, slinging his arm around her shoulder and grabbing a bottle of red off the shelf. "Come with us."
She doesn't argue at all.
They end up on the football field, like some kind of fucking cliché. Quinn's sitting there with her legs crossed, talking about how she wants to get her masters, and Finn thought she wanted to be an actress, and she laughs and shakes her head. She says she's not really sure what she wants to be, she just doesn't want to leave Yale yet. She's got her own apartment now, and shows them pictures on her phone of some of her favourite places on campus.
She's like a totally different person. Even when she was being nice, way back when, you were always sort of afraid that she'd flip that switch and be kind of psychotic. She's just happy now, and it's written all over her face. She's way more fun to hang out with.
And he's not the only one who's noticed it.
They're all pretty drunk when Puck and Quinn end up sitting a little closer together, Puck teasing her about her clothes and her hair and whatever else. He's generally acting like a fifth grader with a crush, but it's sort of hilarious to watch, so Finn leans back on his elbows and does just that.
He's sort of dying a little, though, because Quinn is like, best friends with Rachel, and she knows things he doesn't, things he wants to know. Like how is she. She's obviously happy - he saw that with his own eyes - but he wants to know more. Is she still doing well in school? Does she have anything lined up for after? Where did she meet her boyfriend and is he good to her?"
He thinks he could be okay with it if the guy's good to her.
Puck speaks before Finn can, leans over a little towards Quinn and says, "Come for a walk with me."
Quinn starts laughing hard and smacks Puck on the chest. "Oh, my god. That is not even going to work on me right now."
Puck grins at her. "What will?"
Finn's drunk enough that he thinks he's funny. "Call her beautiful and dangle a tiara in front of her face."
He just laughs when she leans over to smack him, too.
(They all do another shot, then Puck stands up and reaches his hand down, and Quinn sighs and puts hers in his, lets him pull her up. Finn doesn't know, really, where they go off to, but they're only gone like, 10 minutes and they're still holding hands when they sit down again.)
They all fall asleep under one blanket, Quinn between them but cuddling with Puck, not Finn.
He sort of feels like maybe there's part of this that's a little meant to be. You know, if one other person was here.
He and Quinn meet up again, before she has to go back to school, and the first thing she says to him when she slides into the booth at the coffee shop is, "She's really happy," and sounds all sincere about it.
"Yeah?"
"Yes." He lets out a long breath. "She was the lead in Evita this year." Okay, that makes him smile. "And she's got this agent now, because she blew everyone away."
"Good," he says quietly, and nods a little bit, because it is good. "That's...Good."
"She's really doing it," Quinn tells him, and he looks at her across the table. "Everything you wanted her to do."
And that hits him hard, because it is everything he wanted her to do. She's played it all by his rules and he can't be mad at her for any of it.
He's really only got himself to blame.
... ... ...
"I think he's still in love with you."
"Quinn!" Santana shouts, and Rachel's just trying to...She doesn't know. Breathe, maybe. "Jesus Christ. What the fuck?"
"I'm sorry. I'm just telling you what I saw," Quinn says. Rachel doesn't want to be mad at Quinn. Or at all, really. But it's hard, when all she can think about is Finn, and him being with someone else, and how... "He's different now."
"Good," Santana says, and grabs the bottle of water out of Quinn's hand, takes a sip and drops it on the grass. It's a strangely gorgeous day in New York and Quinn's here for a day before going back to Yale. "Now she doesn't have to worry about it, because she probably doesn't even know him anymore."
Rachel sighs. "Stop talking about me like I'm not here."
"No, actually, let's stop talking like any of this fucking matters," Santana says, sounding incredibly angry. Rachel spares a glance at her. "He broke your goddamn heart in a million pieces and hasn't even spoken to you in four years, let alone actually seen you, so..."
"That's not actually true," Rachel admits, whispering, and Santana stops talking and she can feel both her friends' eyes on her.
She has no idea why she's bringing it up now. It's like she's defending him or something, like he deserves it. And maybe he does. God, if he still loves her, which she isn't sure whether or not she should believe, then he deserves not to be made to look like the bad guy. Maybe. She doesn't know. She's so confused, because she loves someone else, and yet hearing that Finn may still love her sent a shockwave through her body, like some kind of stupid hope that's been hiding inside her since she heard he was seeing someone else. It's like that part of her was asleep and needed to hear that he still cares for her to be woken up.
"Rachel," Quinn says, when she's apparently taking too long to explain herself.
"Before he left for Germany," she says, and knows her friends will understand so she doesn't have to spell it all out.
"You slept with him," Quinn says, eyes closed.
"Fuck, Rachel."
"Stop!" she says, too loudly. "You don't know what it was like! He was just...he showed up on my doorstep, and said he loved me and missed me, and...I just...I still felt like I needed him."
"But..."
"No," she says, shaking her head, and then looking at both her friends. "It doesn't even matter how we left things. He told me he loved me, and then found someone else."
Quinn tilts her head. "You did, too."
"Yes, I did." She bites back tears, closes her eyes tight. "Because I can't spend the rest of my life holding out on some stupid, immature hope that maybe my high school sweetheart will come back and sweep me off my feet." Santana looks like she understands this. God, she almost looks proud. "And I hate him, for making me hope in the first place, and then again two years ago when he made love to me and then left without saying goodbye. I hate him."
Santana slips her arm around Rachel's shoulder.
Quinn asks, "Even if he loves you?"
"Yes," Rachel says, and she means it.
Quinn looks too sad about it, considering it's not her life.
Rachel's phone buzzes with a text from Michael asking if she's having fun with her friends. She's lying a little bit when she says yes.
Her dads come in for her graduation and she gets her Equity card the same week. Sure, it may be presumptuous, and it's expensive to join, but it opens her up to a whole lot more auditions, too. There's only so much work available to amateurs in this town, and she doesn't plan on being one for long. Daddy says something about her getting a bigger place with money from her first performing job, if it's a decent one, and she can't say she hates that idea. She's been growing out of this apartment steadily for at least three years, and no, she doesn't hate it, and it'll always be her first New York apartment, but she wouldn't mind an actual bedroom, and a kitchen that's a little easier to cook in.
Everything seems to be going really well.
It can't all last, can it?
She's sitting on a restaurant patio with Michael one evening in June, telling him what she thinks is a pretty good story about her day, which he asked to hear about.
She literally stops mid-sentence when she notices that he's not looking at her at all, and likely not listening. She follows his line of sight to a tall, beautiful woman in a nicer dress than the one Rachel's wearing.
Oh.
"Michael." He looks at her, and doesn't seem to understand the perplexed look on her face. "You were blatantly staring at that woman while I'm sitting right here."
"What?" he sort of laughs. Not helping. "She was beautiful."
Rachel shakes her head. "Not a very good answer."
He half rolls his eyes at her and leans towards her, lets his knee brush against hers beneath the table. "Come on. It's nothing. I'm a photographer."
She scoffs. "So because you're a photographer, that means you can completely disregard me when a prettier woman walks by?"
"God," he groans. "Don't do that. That self-deprecating shit."
Their meals haven't arrived, and she's starving, but she's not going to sit here with him and let him talk to her like this. 99 per cent of the time he's a perfect gentleman, but sometimes he's just a man, and she should cut him some slack, but she doesn't want to. So she pulls her napkin off her lap and sets it on the table, watches him sigh and tilt his head like she's being dramatic.
She still kisses his cheek as she grabs her bag.
"Now you can watch me walk away."
"Rachel."
She doesn't stop.
It feels sort of good, for once, to be the one doing the leaving. And to be the one leaving of her own free will.
He shows up at her apartment anyway, a few hours later, with an apology and street-corner carnations in his hand. (He loves them, the whole concept, and has easily 250 photographs of them, old men with flowers in buckets and stuff like that, in a file on his computer.)
"I only want you," he tells her, like it's a given, and yet it still sounds sincere. "You trust me more than that, don't you?"
She nods, because it's true. Honestly, she wouldn't have minded him looking at another woman (she's not naive and realizes he likely does it a lot, since he is a human being; she looks at other attractive men, too) had he not been ignoring her to do it.
"I want you to look at me."
She looks up at him through her lashes and he locks his hands behind her back, pulling her to him as he smiles down at her.
"Baby, I look at you more than you even notice."
She really loves him. And she loves how in love with her he is.
... ... ...
His job just got a whole lot fucking harder, to be honest. He doesn't remember his group of trainees when he was a student acting like this. So many of them have to be disciplined, and it's like, ridiculous that they just don't get the things that came so easily for him and his group of guys when they went through this.
All he knows is that they're threatening to make him look bad and he really doesn't want them to accomplish that. He does a little research and looks up teaching methods, and like, it's obviously different in the Army than it is at freaking West Point, or Harvard, or whatever, but he can at least start to apply some of the shit he's read about, right?
One of his 'problem' kids (and he calls them all kids, even though there're one or two who're older than him) starts totally picking things up, and Finn's colleagues and senior officers take notice of that.
So that's sweet.
Being back in the country makes it so much easier to keep in touch with his family and friends. He at least emails or texts Puck once a week, and his mom's stoked on not having to figure out time differences or wait for him to be available to call her. He's even emailed with Quinn a couple times since seeing her in Lima. Kurt's pissed at him because Rachel's pissed at Kurt, but he didn't tell Kurt not to tell her about Meagan, and like, whatever. He can't pin that on Finn. He could have told her and he made the conscious choice not to. Finn also may have said something about how one of these days Kurt's gonna have to own his own choices, so that's probably got him mad, too.
And okay, there's this girl. One girl, one time, one night, and he meets her at a bar off base, and she's really hot and totally into the Army thing (probably why she's at this bar in the first place) and he leaves right after the sex and feels like fucking shit because she's not...
He can try to ignore it, but there's just one woman he wants.
... ... ...
She toils in the chorus of an Off-Broadway show that's not very good, all while she auditions for parts on Broadway.
She graduated top of her glass from NYADA. That means something in this town. Casting directors like to see that. It's the only reason she's even working now, she knows. She wants more and it's understandable, so she hustles and works a crazy performance schedule, then gets up for early morning casting calls and slips back into her boyfriend's bed before he's even awake, some days.
And he helps her, too. He used her for this small jewelry store's ad campaign, basically put a bunch of pretty diamonds on her in a dark room and took a series of photographs that ended up in a variety of local publications. The pictures are gorgeous, she must say. And he took her headshots, too. He wants to see her succeed, and he's supportive of her, even when her now crazy schedule means they hardly see one another for days at a time. He works all the time, too, but now that she's out of school, she pretty much works when he's off and vice versa, most days.
They've been together a long time, and she tries not to think too hard about how this is, technically, the longest she's ever been with anyone. Off and on doesn't count, she doesn't think. This relationship has been solid and steady since it started, and she adores that. He's an amazing boyfriend and a lovely person, and she can honestly say that her life is infinitely better with him in it.
She hasn't said that to him, because they aren't that couple. They don't need to make all those big proclamations and promises, really. Even their I love yous were simple, just said in bed one morning when he slid his hand across her stomach and kissed her bare shoulder. She likes it this way. There are no big, dramatic scenes, and no promises that are impossible to keep. She's never had this before, and she enjoys it far more than anyone probably thought she would. Herself included. She's learning to keep the drama on the stage and out of her personal life, and really, she doesn't have to worry about it much with Michael, because he doesn't have much use for drama anyway.
"I have to go to this wedding."
She turns her head, even though she really needs to learn this monologue for her callback tomorrow, and looks at him, sitting there next to her on her bed with his shirt off and that tattoo she pretends to hate on his bicep.
"It's in Boston," he continues. "You coming?"
She laughs a bit. This is the first she's heard of any wedding, and she has no idea when it is or if she can get the time off. The fact that he invites her so casually is probably some sort of testament to how good their relationship is; he knows she'll make it work if he wants her there.
"Who's getting married?"
"My cousin. It's this big thing."
She giggles again. "Most weddings are."
He gives her this look like he wants to say something more, and she has this feeling of pure dread in the pit of her stomach that he's going to ask her about her wedding, the one that didn't happen (twice). They've never talked about it. They've talked about her relationship with Finn, in the same way that most couples talk about past relationships, but he's never asked her about her actual wedding. She really doesn't want him to.
"Come with me. It'll be fun. You can see how crazy my family is when we all get together," he says, and his fingers slide down her jaw until he's got her chin in his hand, his thumb coming up to just barely brush against her lips.
God, the way he touches her sometimes.
She nods a bit, even as she looks at his mouth. (Honestly, her boyfriend is gorgeous, and it's not crazy that she sometimes is overcome with this absolute need to kiss him.) "Okay. I'll see what I can do about work."
She, of course, gets the time off and buys a dress - though she doesn't know what to wear to a New England wedding in October and sales associates in most stores are completely inept at helping her - and he rents a car for the drive to his hometown. It's nice, just sitting in a car with him, her body angled towards his a little bit and his choice of music playing from the car's speakers. (He's got good taste, so she doesn't mind relinquishing control over all things musical. On occasion.) She's never been to Boston, so before they go to his parents' house, he shows her around a little bit, points out a few of his favourite places, like the park where he used to play basketball as a kid, and his old high school, and the house his family lived in until he was 15.
She had no idea his family was so traditional. But when, after dinner, his mother says something about blankets being laid out for him on the pullout in the basement, Rachel almost wants to laugh. He's in his thirties and his mother won't let him sleep in the same bed as his girlfriend? But it's their house and she's completely respectful of their rules, even if sleeping alone in a strange home feels incredibly odd.
The wedding is beautiful and Michael holds her hand through the entire ceremony, and it's not until they're at the reception and finished with their dinner that things become very uncomfortable.
"So," Michael's mother says, a little grin on her lips, "any plans for you two?"
"I...What do you mean?" Rachel asks, because the woman's looking right at her. Michael's just sitting next to her, holding his glass of champagne, his arm around her shoulders. He's making an effort not to look at her, she can tell.
"Marriage. All this. It's been a long time now."
Rachel feels the blood drain from her face. She's had a few panic attacks in her life and this is how they usually start. "I...We..."
"Don't tell me you've never thought about it," his mother says, laughing a bit.
No one at this table thinks this is an inappropriate conversation, and Michael is still just sitting there letting it happen.
"She has," Michael says, and gives her this knowing look that makes her want to scream at him. "A lot, I think."
He hasn't even had a lot to drink, he's just being...She doesn't exactly know what he's being.
"Michael," she says quietly, but in a tone she hopes conveys that he should quit while he's ahead.
"You're young," his mother laughs, patting Rachel's hand, like that's the reason this is incredibly uncomfortable for her. Rachel forces a smile.
Then Michael says, "Oh, not as young as she could be," and she swears she's never felt like he doesn't have a clue who she is, until now.
She can feel her chest moving quickly as she tries to steady her breathing and not start a conversation this is really not the time or place for, and waits at least five minutes before she excuses herself and walks directly down the hall and out the front doors of the reception hall. It's cold outside, but the air is nice and it cools her down as she takes deep breaths. Once she's calmed down enough, she reaches for her phone and dials the number of someone she thinks will understand this.
"Michael was just talking about marriage."
"Well," Quinn laughs, "you are at a wedding."
"No, not..." She takes an unsteady breath. Her friend must be able to sense that something's really wrong.
"Rach?"
"Not our marriage," she says, and hears Quinn's gasp.
"Oh my god."
She doesn't want to fight with him while they're under his parents' roof, so she doesn't bring it up, even though she knows he can tell that there's something wrong. And she tries to think of ways to bring it up, but none of them sound as good in her head as she wants them to.
In the end, she doesn't have to bring it up at all. It's not like they haven't been talking or anything, but during a silence on the drive home, somewhere about halfway between Boston and New York, he sighs and glances over at her.
"You've had a ring in your drawer the entire time I've known you."
She doesn't know what to say to that.
No, she wasn't hiding it. It's been in that drawer since she moved to New York, and she's only taken it out once, which she still feels sort of pathetic about. But where else is she supposed to put it? What else is she supposed to do with it? And she's not upset with him for finding it or knowing that it's there. It's in her underwear drawer, and it's not as though that's off limits to him.
And she thinks of Finn, right now, and tries to imagine how hurt he'd be to know that another man has touched that box, looked at that ring. (She tries not to ever think about how hurt he'd be that another man has touched her.)
She looks out the window and rubs the thumb of her left hand against the underside of her ring finger.
Everything about her life that has been so stable for so long suddenly feels seconds from tumbling down around her.
Chapter: 4/7
Rating: R
Pairing: Finn/Rachel
Summary: He wants her to see how hard he's working to be something. It's supposed to make her proud of him, the Army thing. And plus, he really wanted her to see his progress so that maybe she could admit he's doing something good. For them.
Word Count: 7,600
Disclaimer: Don't own.
"I need to tell you something," Rachel says one day, when Michael is sitting on his sofa, editing photos on his laptop, and she's reading a book she's borrowed from Quinn.
In the book, the main couple has just gotten engaged, and she starts feeling guilty that she's never told him about what is essentially her only relationship, prior to this one.
And this is a relationship. He calls her his girlfriend, and he's her boyfriend, and last week when his brother was in town from Philadelphia for a conference, they all had dinner together. Santana and Quinn have met him, and he's passed their 'test'. (Which basically means that, to Santana, he's hot enough for Rachel, and to Quinn, he's sweet enough.) They spend a great deal of their spare time together, and she took him to see a revival of one of her favourite musicals, and she went with him to a photographer friend's show at a gallery in Queens.
She's very comfortable with the way things are going. He treats her amazingly well, and she must say, dating an older man is wonderful. He's mature and has a stable life, and he seems to know how to take care of her, even when she doesn't ask him to.
And she loves that he's the kind of man who, when his girlfriend says those words, simply replies, "Okay," and gives her his attention.
He's confident, and secure, and he trusts her when she says she likes him as much as she does. The only reason she's telling him this is because he deserves to know, not because she wants him to doubt anything between them.
"I was engaged," she says, sort of quietly, and then waits for his reaction. Which is for him to just stare at her like he can't quite comprehend this.
"What, were you like 16?" He's smiling the slightest bit, and she knows this is a shock to him, so she's not mad at him for that comment.
"18," she corrects, and he tilts his head. "We were very in love, and...He was my high school sweetheart, and essentially my first everything." He nods, almost like he understands. She looks down at her lap. "My only, where some things are concerned, until you."
He says, "Oh," like this is a complete shock to him.
"He broke up with me on what was supposed to be our wedding day." She hears his muttered curse, but continues on anyway. "And put me on a train to New York, and I just...I thought you should know."
"So this was, what? Three years ago?" he asks, and she nods her head and looks at him through her lashes for any signs of him being angry or bothered by this. He's smiling. "Three years and...And you picked me?"
"Michael," she laughs quietly. "That's not..."
His hand slides up her calf, over her knee and onto her thigh, then the tips of his fingers are brushing the edge of her panties under her dress as he leans over her.
He says, "You could have anyone," against her lips, and she doesn't correct him.
(Not anyone.)
The book she's been reading falls to the floor, forgotten, and maybe he's right about some things, though. She waited three years and never found anyone suitable until him. Maybe there's something special about that.
... ... ...
He gets word that one of the guys he was in basic with was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, and he doesn't know how to fucking process this. Like, he had conversations with this guy, about family and the Army and life, and now he's just gone, and Finn can't even go to his funeral or do anything. The guy had a kid, too, a four year old boy who'd be, what, seven, eight by now? And now has to grow up without a dad.
It's not fucking fair and Finn hates everything right now.
Meagan's been gone a month and a half, and he really, really misses her. If she was here, she'd know what to say to make him feel better. She's so good with stuff like that. But now, with the time difference and everything, he can hardly ever even catch her online, and if he emails her, he doesn't get anything back for like a day and a half. He's not mad at her for that, and it's not her fault or his, it's just hard, being with someone long distance and wanting to talk to them and not being able to. And this is coming from someone who's had a hell of a lot of practice with that.
Some asshole picks the wrong fucking day to bust Finn's balls about his relationship with Meagan now that she's back in the States. They're at the gym and this guy Finn's never even really liked starts talking shit and asking how he and Meagan 'keep in touch' or whatever. There're lewd hand gestures and filthy words, and Finn lunges at him, only to be held back by two guys who've been watching this whole scene go down. They actually sort of save his ass because he's got a spotless record he's actually really proud of, and he doesn't want to fuck that up over some idiot who can't keep his fucking mouth closed.
"Hudson," his buddy Cohen calls after him after he's left the gym and is on his way home. "What's with you?"
"You heard him." Yeah, he keeps walking. He's not in the mood for a heart to heart.
"Hey," Cohen says harshly, and jogs so he's in front of Finn, then puts his hand on his shoulder to stop him. Finn just looks at him darkly. "Get your shit together, man."
"I don't need this right now."
"Yeah, you do." Finn rolls his eyes and Cohen shoves his shoulder the slightest bit, just to get his attention. "I remember you when you first came here. You're that guy again."
"What are you talking about?" he asks, shaking his head.
Cohen laughs a bit. "Don't try that shit on me. I'm not as dumb as I look. You were miserable." Finn just stares. "So whatever was going on then, or whatever's going on now...You just got put up for promotion, dude. Don't fuck it up."
Finn sighs. His buddy is right. He really can't afford to slip now. He needs to keep on top of things and be the soldier he always was. Making Specialist will put him in the next pay bracket, and he wouldn't hate that at all. He just needs to keep his nose down and do the work like he always has, and maybe he'll actually be able to do something here. He's already in such good standing that he's working his way through the system, talking to different people who're actually listening to him about his dad's discharge status, and considering that was one of his main motivations for being in the Army at all, he needs to follow through on it. He can't lose momentum or credibility now.
He goes home and checks his email, and there's something there from Meagan, but there's something from Puck, too.
Reading that apparently Rachel's in a relationship with some guy in New York is really, really not what he needed right now.
He can't be mad about it. He can't be mad at her, and he can't be too upset about it, either. He left her. He told her he'd let her go so she could live her life and do everything he knew she'd do. He hasn't thought much about her being with other people, because it's one of those things he just...
He just remembers it, the way she's told him she loved him the last two times she saw him. Tears and intensity and all that.
And yeah, he's with someone else, and he should feel like an asshole about it, but it's not even a shock to him to realize that Megan's I love yous don't mean as much as Rachel's did. Do.
He doesn't bother reading Megan's email. He just sets his alarm so he can get up early in the morning in hopes of catching the guy in that office in Texas who he needs to get in touch with about his dad.
He has his own agenda, too. No Rachel, no Meagan, no one has anything to do with it.
But still, he thinks about how he has all this to accomplish, how he told Rachel that, and that maybe someday...
Either she never believed him at all, or she stopped believing him because he's taking too long, or because he hurt her when he left or when he got a girlfriend or whatever.
It feels like she's given up on him, on them.
It's hard to sleep.
... ... ...
She lands the lead in NYADA's production. She's not entirely surprised, but it's still a thrill, and she still cries when they tell her, and she's still proud that she's going to finally have a chance to perform Don't Cry For Me Argentina to a packed house.
However, between her rehearsal schedule and her course load, she really has hardly any time at all to spend with her boyfriend or her friends. Quinn comes in for a weekend and stays with Santana, and Rachel only has the time to get lunch with them once, because she's got a 12 hour rehearsal, and a monologue to learn for one of her classes before Monday.
Michael presses her up against the door to her apartment when she lets him in, pushes down her pajama pants and slips inside her, says, "Before you can tell me you don't have time." It makes her laugh, and it feels amazing, and the high she gets from her orgasm(s) makes her feel more relaxed than she has in days.
Her fathers, of course, come in for opening night, and she's been so preoccupied that she didn't even really consider that they'll be meeting her boyfriend for the first time. She doesn't have time to think about it, either, just tells Santana and Quinn to run interference and not let Michael sit next to either of her dads in the theatre, where they're surely going to cry as they watch her.
There are agents, managers, casting directors, choreographers, and directors in the audience. Playwrights, too, likely. She cannot afford to mess this up. She may be a touch dramatic, but when she says that her entire career rides on this performance of this show, this night, she's not wrong. If she messes up, or chokes, her chances of working in this or any other theatre city will be cut down considerably.
She knows the book front and back, and she's been singing the songs since she was a child. She puts a bit of her own personality into her performance, and, at one point, sees Carmen standing in the wings shaking her head and smiling, like Rachel is...
"Remarkable," Carmen says, hugging Rachel tightly after the curtain has come down and the crowd is still roaring.
She just got her first standing ovation in New York City. She gets her second on her curtain call, and there are so many flowers being handed to her that she can't carry them all. She's so overwhelmed she just wants to cry.
After her fathers have gone back to Lima - after admitting that they love Michael, which surprises her only because they've been wary all along of the age difference - Michael shows her a photo he took of her during her performance. It's her, center stage, singing in front of a set of microphones. The composition of the photo is flawless, though she shouldn't have expected anything less. He's a brilliant photographer.
He's framed it, an 8x10, and he carries it home for her, hangs it on her wall in her apartment, between a picture of she and her fathers and a picture of she and her glee club at Nationals.
And that night, when they're in her bed and he's playing with her hair and she's just about lulled to sleep by it, his voice is in her ear, quiet, but sure.
"Don't you ever doubt yourself," he says, and her eyes stay closed, but her heart races. "You're a star."
Tears slip from her eyes and onto the pillow.
Someone else told her that first.
... ... ...
He's officially Corporal Finn Hudson of the U.S. Army, and he's packing up his things because his new post is actually back at Fort Leonard Wood as an NCO, helping to train new MPs. When they gave him the post, they told him it's because he's been an exemplary soldier and MP and the Army wants more like him.
Honestly, it feels really good. His hard work's paying off and he likes it, seeing results and being acknowledged for what he does.
He's single, though. Honestly, it doesn't feel much different now than it has since Meagan left Germany. She basically just called him out one day, when they actually got to talk on the phone for the first time in weeks, and asked if he even wanted to bother trying to stay together. He didn't want to lie to her and couldn't, and honestly...Well, he doesn't want to say he stopped caring about whether or not they stayed together, but the idea of not being with her didn't hurt anymore. Hearing her cry sucked, and realizing she'd probably known all along that she was more invested in it than he was didn't feel all that great either, but he can't help it.
It's not her fault - or his, really - that at least half his heart already belongs to someone else.
He's got two weeks' leave before he has to be on base.
He finds himself in New York. It's partly his fault and partly not, but he's not getting into all that, because he's in New York, and so is she, and fuck, the first night he's there, he gets drunk in a bar in Manhattan (gets free drinks all night because he's got a set of dog tags around his neck and an Army tee shirt on) and tries to justify how he's still kind of fucking obsessed with her, almost four years later.
Four years.
He put her on a train to New York and she never came back. She said she wouldn't. He should have believed her. She's almost done school. It's March and it's her senior year and then she'll be graduated, and he hopes to god she's doing everything he's imagined her doing. She wants it all so bad that he can't picture her not going after it. She's probably blowing people away on a daily basis with how talented she is.
He hangs out, a bit, near her apartment, and he doesn't know if he'll have either the nerve to go and talk to her, or the self-restraint not to. Fuck, he doesn't even know if she actually still lives here. He just sort of people watches from across the street, sips a cup of bad coffee and watches the time, because he's got a bus to catch back to Ohio.
It's an hour before he sees her. She's walking down the street in boots and jeans and a jacket and a bright pink scarf around her neck, her long hair blowing around in the wind.
And she's not alone, and seeing her holding hands with this guy makes Finn's heart feel completely fucking destroyed. She's laughing and he's got her keys in his hand, unlocks the door to the building and holds it open so she can go inside.
She was so wrapped up in this guy that she didn't even notice anyone else around. It's a narrow street and he wasn't even all that far from her. Close enough to notice that she still wears that silver ring on her right hand, and to hear that she still laughs the same.
He keeps his sunglasses over his eyes the entire bus trip to Ohio, claims jet lag and falls asleep two hours after arriving at his mom and Burt's place. He sleeps too long and when he wakes up, it's the middle of the night and he's starving, so he goes downstairs and pulls a few things out of the fridge to make a sandwich.
His mom must hear him, though. She comes downstairs in her pajamas and bathrobe and sits down at the table while he makes his food.
"Did you find what you were looking for in New York?" she asks, and he knows she knows that Rachel's with someone else, and fuck, he feels really pathetic for hanging on like this.
"I never do," he answers, and she says his name. He turns around to look at her. He must look devastated or something like that, because she's never, ever been able to hide when she's feeling all the same pain he is, for him. "She's in love with someone else, mom."
"You were, too, honey."
He laughs a bit, humourlessly, and shakes his head. "Not really."
He sits down, his food forgotten, and she moves her chair a little closer to his so she can slip her arm around his shoulder as he sits with his head in his hands.
"Maybe she isn't, either," she says carefully.
He shakes his head. "You didn't see them. She's..."
He feels fucking stupid for feeling like crying, but they've never felt over to him, not until right now, when he's admitting it out loud that she's really moved on.
"Finn."
"I love her," he says, too quietly, and fuck, it feels good to say it, but it sucks that it's still true.
Because if it's still true four years later, it's always going to fucking be true, and he'll never have her, and he'll just be some broken guy with half a heart to give to a woman who'll settle for it.
His trip home is filled with surprises. Well, not filled, but he gets two really cool ones.
He opens the door and Puck's standing there on the other side of it, and they hug so hard Finn's back actually pops. It's just really good to see his best friend, and he's not too proud to say that even with all the guys he's met in the Army, none of them are as good a friend to him as Puck is.
"Jesus," Puck says, standing there in the foyer of Finn's house. He keeps his hands on Finn's shoulders and looks at him for a second. "You're a fucking beast." Finn's mom, standing behind him, laughs a bit. "Sorry, Mrs. H."
"It's okay, Noah," she says, and collects her hug, too.
So he and Puck literally just fuck around for a couple days, drinking and swapping stories back and forth. Puck's been working full time as a studio's session guitarist for a while now, and apparently there's a chance he could be in line to do a tour with this 'marginally popular' singer/songwriter who wants a strong guitar player who can sing backup. It's really cool, actually, and Finn's excited for him.
Then they're out on a beer run and they're standing there trying to decide if they should get some whiskey, too, and in walks Quinn Fabray, who looks right at them both, lets out this little squeal thing, and sort of skips over to them. She hugs them both at once and starts talking all fast. Apparently she's home for spring break and so bored in this town that she was going to get a bottle of wine and just drink that to entertain herself.
"Well, darlin'," Puck says, slinging his arm around her shoulder and grabbing a bottle of red off the shelf. "Come with us."
She doesn't argue at all.
They end up on the football field, like some kind of fucking cliché. Quinn's sitting there with her legs crossed, talking about how she wants to get her masters, and Finn thought she wanted to be an actress, and she laughs and shakes her head. She says she's not really sure what she wants to be, she just doesn't want to leave Yale yet. She's got her own apartment now, and shows them pictures on her phone of some of her favourite places on campus.
She's like a totally different person. Even when she was being nice, way back when, you were always sort of afraid that she'd flip that switch and be kind of psychotic. She's just happy now, and it's written all over her face. She's way more fun to hang out with.
And he's not the only one who's noticed it.
They're all pretty drunk when Puck and Quinn end up sitting a little closer together, Puck teasing her about her clothes and her hair and whatever else. He's generally acting like a fifth grader with a crush, but it's sort of hilarious to watch, so Finn leans back on his elbows and does just that.
He's sort of dying a little, though, because Quinn is like, best friends with Rachel, and she knows things he doesn't, things he wants to know. Like how is she. She's obviously happy - he saw that with his own eyes - but he wants to know more. Is she still doing well in school? Does she have anything lined up for after? Where did she meet her boyfriend and is he good to her?"
He thinks he could be okay with it if the guy's good to her.
Puck speaks before Finn can, leans over a little towards Quinn and says, "Come for a walk with me."
Quinn starts laughing hard and smacks Puck on the chest. "Oh, my god. That is not even going to work on me right now."
Puck grins at her. "What will?"
Finn's drunk enough that he thinks he's funny. "Call her beautiful and dangle a tiara in front of her face."
He just laughs when she leans over to smack him, too.
(They all do another shot, then Puck stands up and reaches his hand down, and Quinn sighs and puts hers in his, lets him pull her up. Finn doesn't know, really, where they go off to, but they're only gone like, 10 minutes and they're still holding hands when they sit down again.)
They all fall asleep under one blanket, Quinn between them but cuddling with Puck, not Finn.
He sort of feels like maybe there's part of this that's a little meant to be. You know, if one other person was here.
He and Quinn meet up again, before she has to go back to school, and the first thing she says to him when she slides into the booth at the coffee shop is, "She's really happy," and sounds all sincere about it.
"Yeah?"
"Yes." He lets out a long breath. "She was the lead in Evita this year." Okay, that makes him smile. "And she's got this agent now, because she blew everyone away."
"Good," he says quietly, and nods a little bit, because it is good. "That's...Good."
"She's really doing it," Quinn tells him, and he looks at her across the table. "Everything you wanted her to do."
And that hits him hard, because it is everything he wanted her to do. She's played it all by his rules and he can't be mad at her for any of it.
He's really only got himself to blame.
... ... ...
"I think he's still in love with you."
"Quinn!" Santana shouts, and Rachel's just trying to...She doesn't know. Breathe, maybe. "Jesus Christ. What the fuck?"
"I'm sorry. I'm just telling you what I saw," Quinn says. Rachel doesn't want to be mad at Quinn. Or at all, really. But it's hard, when all she can think about is Finn, and him being with someone else, and how... "He's different now."
"Good," Santana says, and grabs the bottle of water out of Quinn's hand, takes a sip and drops it on the grass. It's a strangely gorgeous day in New York and Quinn's here for a day before going back to Yale. "Now she doesn't have to worry about it, because she probably doesn't even know him anymore."
Rachel sighs. "Stop talking about me like I'm not here."
"No, actually, let's stop talking like any of this fucking matters," Santana says, sounding incredibly angry. Rachel spares a glance at her. "He broke your goddamn heart in a million pieces and hasn't even spoken to you in four years, let alone actually seen you, so..."
"That's not actually true," Rachel admits, whispering, and Santana stops talking and she can feel both her friends' eyes on her.
She has no idea why she's bringing it up now. It's like she's defending him or something, like he deserves it. And maybe he does. God, if he still loves her, which she isn't sure whether or not she should believe, then he deserves not to be made to look like the bad guy. Maybe. She doesn't know. She's so confused, because she loves someone else, and yet hearing that Finn may still love her sent a shockwave through her body, like some kind of stupid hope that's been hiding inside her since she heard he was seeing someone else. It's like that part of her was asleep and needed to hear that he still cares for her to be woken up.
"Rachel," Quinn says, when she's apparently taking too long to explain herself.
"Before he left for Germany," she says, and knows her friends will understand so she doesn't have to spell it all out.
"You slept with him," Quinn says, eyes closed.
"Fuck, Rachel."
"Stop!" she says, too loudly. "You don't know what it was like! He was just...he showed up on my doorstep, and said he loved me and missed me, and...I just...I still felt like I needed him."
"But..."
"No," she says, shaking her head, and then looking at both her friends. "It doesn't even matter how we left things. He told me he loved me, and then found someone else."
Quinn tilts her head. "You did, too."
"Yes, I did." She bites back tears, closes her eyes tight. "Because I can't spend the rest of my life holding out on some stupid, immature hope that maybe my high school sweetheart will come back and sweep me off my feet." Santana looks like she understands this. God, she almost looks proud. "And I hate him, for making me hope in the first place, and then again two years ago when he made love to me and then left without saying goodbye. I hate him."
Santana slips her arm around Rachel's shoulder.
Quinn asks, "Even if he loves you?"
"Yes," Rachel says, and she means it.
Quinn looks too sad about it, considering it's not her life.
Rachel's phone buzzes with a text from Michael asking if she's having fun with her friends. She's lying a little bit when she says yes.
Her dads come in for her graduation and she gets her Equity card the same week. Sure, it may be presumptuous, and it's expensive to join, but it opens her up to a whole lot more auditions, too. There's only so much work available to amateurs in this town, and she doesn't plan on being one for long. Daddy says something about her getting a bigger place with money from her first performing job, if it's a decent one, and she can't say she hates that idea. She's been growing out of this apartment steadily for at least three years, and no, she doesn't hate it, and it'll always be her first New York apartment, but she wouldn't mind an actual bedroom, and a kitchen that's a little easier to cook in.
Everything seems to be going really well.
It can't all last, can it?
She's sitting on a restaurant patio with Michael one evening in June, telling him what she thinks is a pretty good story about her day, which he asked to hear about.
She literally stops mid-sentence when she notices that he's not looking at her at all, and likely not listening. She follows his line of sight to a tall, beautiful woman in a nicer dress than the one Rachel's wearing.
Oh.
"Michael." He looks at her, and doesn't seem to understand the perplexed look on her face. "You were blatantly staring at that woman while I'm sitting right here."
"What?" he sort of laughs. Not helping. "She was beautiful."
Rachel shakes her head. "Not a very good answer."
He half rolls his eyes at her and leans towards her, lets his knee brush against hers beneath the table. "Come on. It's nothing. I'm a photographer."
She scoffs. "So because you're a photographer, that means you can completely disregard me when a prettier woman walks by?"
"God," he groans. "Don't do that. That self-deprecating shit."
Their meals haven't arrived, and she's starving, but she's not going to sit here with him and let him talk to her like this. 99 per cent of the time he's a perfect gentleman, but sometimes he's just a man, and she should cut him some slack, but she doesn't want to. So she pulls her napkin off her lap and sets it on the table, watches him sigh and tilt his head like she's being dramatic.
She still kisses his cheek as she grabs her bag.
"Now you can watch me walk away."
"Rachel."
She doesn't stop.
It feels sort of good, for once, to be the one doing the leaving. And to be the one leaving of her own free will.
He shows up at her apartment anyway, a few hours later, with an apology and street-corner carnations in his hand. (He loves them, the whole concept, and has easily 250 photographs of them, old men with flowers in buckets and stuff like that, in a file on his computer.)
"I only want you," he tells her, like it's a given, and yet it still sounds sincere. "You trust me more than that, don't you?"
She nods, because it's true. Honestly, she wouldn't have minded him looking at another woman (she's not naive and realizes he likely does it a lot, since he is a human being; she looks at other attractive men, too) had he not been ignoring her to do it.
"I want you to look at me."
She looks up at him through her lashes and he locks his hands behind her back, pulling her to him as he smiles down at her.
"Baby, I look at you more than you even notice."
She really loves him. And she loves how in love with her he is.
... ... ...
His job just got a whole lot fucking harder, to be honest. He doesn't remember his group of trainees when he was a student acting like this. So many of them have to be disciplined, and it's like, ridiculous that they just don't get the things that came so easily for him and his group of guys when they went through this.
All he knows is that they're threatening to make him look bad and he really doesn't want them to accomplish that. He does a little research and looks up teaching methods, and like, it's obviously different in the Army than it is at freaking West Point, or Harvard, or whatever, but he can at least start to apply some of the shit he's read about, right?
One of his 'problem' kids (and he calls them all kids, even though there're one or two who're older than him) starts totally picking things up, and Finn's colleagues and senior officers take notice of that.
So that's sweet.
Being back in the country makes it so much easier to keep in touch with his family and friends. He at least emails or texts Puck once a week, and his mom's stoked on not having to figure out time differences or wait for him to be available to call her. He's even emailed with Quinn a couple times since seeing her in Lima. Kurt's pissed at him because Rachel's pissed at Kurt, but he didn't tell Kurt not to tell her about Meagan, and like, whatever. He can't pin that on Finn. He could have told her and he made the conscious choice not to. Finn also may have said something about how one of these days Kurt's gonna have to own his own choices, so that's probably got him mad, too.
And okay, there's this girl. One girl, one time, one night, and he meets her at a bar off base, and she's really hot and totally into the Army thing (probably why she's at this bar in the first place) and he leaves right after the sex and feels like fucking shit because she's not...
He can try to ignore it, but there's just one woman he wants.
... ... ...
She toils in the chorus of an Off-Broadway show that's not very good, all while she auditions for parts on Broadway.
She graduated top of her glass from NYADA. That means something in this town. Casting directors like to see that. It's the only reason she's even working now, she knows. She wants more and it's understandable, so she hustles and works a crazy performance schedule, then gets up for early morning casting calls and slips back into her boyfriend's bed before he's even awake, some days.
And he helps her, too. He used her for this small jewelry store's ad campaign, basically put a bunch of pretty diamonds on her in a dark room and took a series of photographs that ended up in a variety of local publications. The pictures are gorgeous, she must say. And he took her headshots, too. He wants to see her succeed, and he's supportive of her, even when her now crazy schedule means they hardly see one another for days at a time. He works all the time, too, but now that she's out of school, she pretty much works when he's off and vice versa, most days.
They've been together a long time, and she tries not to think too hard about how this is, technically, the longest she's ever been with anyone. Off and on doesn't count, she doesn't think. This relationship has been solid and steady since it started, and she adores that. He's an amazing boyfriend and a lovely person, and she can honestly say that her life is infinitely better with him in it.
She hasn't said that to him, because they aren't that couple. They don't need to make all those big proclamations and promises, really. Even their I love yous were simple, just said in bed one morning when he slid his hand across her stomach and kissed her bare shoulder. She likes it this way. There are no big, dramatic scenes, and no promises that are impossible to keep. She's never had this before, and she enjoys it far more than anyone probably thought she would. Herself included. She's learning to keep the drama on the stage and out of her personal life, and really, she doesn't have to worry about it much with Michael, because he doesn't have much use for drama anyway.
"I have to go to this wedding."
She turns her head, even though she really needs to learn this monologue for her callback tomorrow, and looks at him, sitting there next to her on her bed with his shirt off and that tattoo she pretends to hate on his bicep.
"It's in Boston," he continues. "You coming?"
She laughs a bit. This is the first she's heard of any wedding, and she has no idea when it is or if she can get the time off. The fact that he invites her so casually is probably some sort of testament to how good their relationship is; he knows she'll make it work if he wants her there.
"Who's getting married?"
"My cousin. It's this big thing."
She giggles again. "Most weddings are."
He gives her this look like he wants to say something more, and she has this feeling of pure dread in the pit of her stomach that he's going to ask her about her wedding, the one that didn't happen (twice). They've never talked about it. They've talked about her relationship with Finn, in the same way that most couples talk about past relationships, but he's never asked her about her actual wedding. She really doesn't want him to.
"Come with me. It'll be fun. You can see how crazy my family is when we all get together," he says, and his fingers slide down her jaw until he's got her chin in his hand, his thumb coming up to just barely brush against her lips.
God, the way he touches her sometimes.
She nods a bit, even as she looks at his mouth. (Honestly, her boyfriend is gorgeous, and it's not crazy that she sometimes is overcome with this absolute need to kiss him.) "Okay. I'll see what I can do about work."
She, of course, gets the time off and buys a dress - though she doesn't know what to wear to a New England wedding in October and sales associates in most stores are completely inept at helping her - and he rents a car for the drive to his hometown. It's nice, just sitting in a car with him, her body angled towards his a little bit and his choice of music playing from the car's speakers. (He's got good taste, so she doesn't mind relinquishing control over all things musical. On occasion.) She's never been to Boston, so before they go to his parents' house, he shows her around a little bit, points out a few of his favourite places, like the park where he used to play basketball as a kid, and his old high school, and the house his family lived in until he was 15.
She had no idea his family was so traditional. But when, after dinner, his mother says something about blankets being laid out for him on the pullout in the basement, Rachel almost wants to laugh. He's in his thirties and his mother won't let him sleep in the same bed as his girlfriend? But it's their house and she's completely respectful of their rules, even if sleeping alone in a strange home feels incredibly odd.
The wedding is beautiful and Michael holds her hand through the entire ceremony, and it's not until they're at the reception and finished with their dinner that things become very uncomfortable.
"So," Michael's mother says, a little grin on her lips, "any plans for you two?"
"I...What do you mean?" Rachel asks, because the woman's looking right at her. Michael's just sitting next to her, holding his glass of champagne, his arm around her shoulders. He's making an effort not to look at her, she can tell.
"Marriage. All this. It's been a long time now."
Rachel feels the blood drain from her face. She's had a few panic attacks in her life and this is how they usually start. "I...We..."
"Don't tell me you've never thought about it," his mother says, laughing a bit.
No one at this table thinks this is an inappropriate conversation, and Michael is still just sitting there letting it happen.
"She has," Michael says, and gives her this knowing look that makes her want to scream at him. "A lot, I think."
He hasn't even had a lot to drink, he's just being...She doesn't exactly know what he's being.
"Michael," she says quietly, but in a tone she hopes conveys that he should quit while he's ahead.
"You're young," his mother laughs, patting Rachel's hand, like that's the reason this is incredibly uncomfortable for her. Rachel forces a smile.
Then Michael says, "Oh, not as young as she could be," and she swears she's never felt like he doesn't have a clue who she is, until now.
She can feel her chest moving quickly as she tries to steady her breathing and not start a conversation this is really not the time or place for, and waits at least five minutes before she excuses herself and walks directly down the hall and out the front doors of the reception hall. It's cold outside, but the air is nice and it cools her down as she takes deep breaths. Once she's calmed down enough, she reaches for her phone and dials the number of someone she thinks will understand this.
"Michael was just talking about marriage."
"Well," Quinn laughs, "you are at a wedding."
"No, not..." She takes an unsteady breath. Her friend must be able to sense that something's really wrong.
"Rach?"
"Not our marriage," she says, and hears Quinn's gasp.
"Oh my god."
She doesn't want to fight with him while they're under his parents' roof, so she doesn't bring it up, even though she knows he can tell that there's something wrong. And she tries to think of ways to bring it up, but none of them sound as good in her head as she wants them to.
In the end, she doesn't have to bring it up at all. It's not like they haven't been talking or anything, but during a silence on the drive home, somewhere about halfway between Boston and New York, he sighs and glances over at her.
"You've had a ring in your drawer the entire time I've known you."
She doesn't know what to say to that.
No, she wasn't hiding it. It's been in that drawer since she moved to New York, and she's only taken it out once, which she still feels sort of pathetic about. But where else is she supposed to put it? What else is she supposed to do with it? And she's not upset with him for finding it or knowing that it's there. It's in her underwear drawer, and it's not as though that's off limits to him.
And she thinks of Finn, right now, and tries to imagine how hurt he'd be to know that another man has touched that box, looked at that ring. (She tries not to ever think about how hurt he'd be that another man has touched her.)
She looks out the window and rubs the thumb of her left hand against the underside of her ring finger.
Everything about her life that has been so stable for so long suddenly feels seconds from tumbling down around her.