Sorry about the wait on this one!
Title: Perfectly Marvelous
Pairing: Finn/Kurt/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Up to Theatricality
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Author Notes: A special thank-you to oh_you_dork for beta-ing! And to _harmlessthings for poking me when necessary. This follows Nothing Beats Threes and This Two-for-One, and is still set in S1.
Summary: It turns out that getting the three of them together was the easy part.
Word Count: 10,397
Not every day is a good one. Kurt and Rachel are still working out the intricacies of being thoughtful towards each other; more than once, Finn has to snap at Kurt to not insult Rachel and expect her to let it roll off her back and, though Kurt is a little too good at standing up to Rachel’s accidental jabs sometimes, she still has an almost supernatural ability to say just the right thing to get Kurt’s hackles up. Admittedly, Finn himself is frequently the subject of warning looks or sharp retorts from the other two, but he’s slowly learning to stop talking once he notices one of them giving him an aggravated look.
The bad days aren’t always a result of volatile personalities, though.
“Rachel?” Finn asks cautiously. It’s after glee let out early and she’s standing at her locker, staring into it, which wouldn’t be an issue except that she hasn’t moved for the past few minutes. “Rachel, what’s up?”
She startles and slams her locker shut, spinning around to face him. “Finn!” she says, “I didn’t realize you were there!” He raises his eyebrows at her and waits for an explanation. He doesn’t always get why she does stuff, but the (usually) nice thing about Rachel is that she’s always more than willing to explain. She bites her lip and glances around the hallway for a moment before cautiously starting, “It’s Kurt.”
Finn’s brows draw together and he looks around the hallway, too, before venturing, “Okay? What’s up? I saw him first period and he was fine.” He can feel his heartbeat speeding up and his palms growing sweaty; he sort of hates the fact that his first thought is that something happened with the hockey jocks and now Kurt’s in the nurse’s office or has a broken arm or something. But after that one night Finn saw a bruise on Kurt’s shoulder from being shoved into a locker too hard, he’s been getting paranoid about that kind of thing in a way he never was before. Rachel isn’t crying or anything, though, so he figures it can’t be anything that bad. On the other hand, she’s biting her lip nervously and Finn doesn’t like the second thought that arrives either, which is that the one guy in their math class who keeps staring at Kurt actually made a move and now Kurt is breaking up with them.
“Mercedes was trying to talk to him again,” Rachel finally says, staring down the hall like the answers to whatever the problem is are at the end of it. Finn starts to sigh in relief. Rachel’s eyes snap back to Finn and she clarifies, significantly, “about us.”
“She doesn’t know, does she?” The words tumble anxiously out of Finn’s mouth before he can think about them.
Rachel scowls at him, and Finn knows that sigh means that if Kurt were around, Finn would be in trouble right now, but he’s not, so she just shakes her head ‘no.’ “He still hasn’t told her, but he wants to talk. Tonight.”
Finn frowns. “We’ve already talked, a lot.” They have an arrangement going and it’s working so far. As far as anyone but the three of them know, Finn and Rachel are finally officially an item, and the only other change is that Rachel and Kurt have started getting along. It isn’t so unusual that Kurt would want to spend time with his almost-stepbrother or new female friend or both together, so no one asks any questions so long as they resist the urge to indulge in PDA.
Mercedes is starting to notice things, though. Kurt has flat-out refused to cancel his weekly Project Runway night with Mercedes even in favor of date nights (Finn still feels a bit insulted, but Rachel has been sympathetic ever since Kurt compared it to someone asking her to give up her bi-weekly Barbra Night), but he’s been forced to cancel Saturday morning plans with her twice already due to ”nights in” accidentally becoming sleepovers. Also, there was that time Kurt came into Glee limping (they all agreed it was worth it, but Kurt still gives Rachel a wary look every time she suggests something new) and failed to come up with a suitably quick reply to Puck’s automatic jeer. The memory of Mercedes’ suspicious look, even not directed at him, still gives Finn nightmares.
“Well, he wants to talk again,” Rachel sighs. Then her lips press together and twitch downward at one corner, like they do when she’s trying not to say something, so Finn waits patiently for the moment when she inevitably says it. It doesn’t take long. “I think we need to, as well,” is what tumbles out. “Yes, things are functioning, but not as well as they could be if we would all put more effort into the relationship.” Finn is alarmed and opens his mouth to protest, but she steamrolls over him, shaking her head and saying, “No, don’t argue now. We’ll discuss it tonight when we have the time and privacy.”
She finally picks up the bag at her feet and starts to sling it onto her back until Finn hurries to take it from her and hoists it over his own shoulder. She smiles warmly at him, and some of the panic that’s taken residence in his gut quiets down. “We’ll meet at my house tonight. Only Daddy is home, and he’ll be busy with work.”
Finn follows her as she starts walking toward their next class, her flats clicking against the tile in the otherwise empty hallway. “What do your dads think of Kurt always coming over when I do?” he can’t help asking after a minute of silence. “They gotta have noticed something.”
Rachel shrugs. “They both think he’s precious, and they like that he tries to straighten things up before you two leave. They’re also proud of me for befriending other members of the gay community.” She hesitates for a second, and Finn glances down at her to see that her expression has shifted into something that’s simultaneously amused, uncomfortable, and disappointed. “They told me that it’s obvious he’s in love with you, though, and that you need to stop leading him on.”
Finn feels a pinch of guilt, like when he looks across the chorus room and sees Kurt staring at him and Rachel, but looking away as soon as he’s caught. “We’ll talk about it tonight, okay?” Finn says, silently pleading for the conversation to end right now. He feels sort of bad that they have to keep it a secret, but the other two know as well as he does why they can’t tell anyone. Maybe by tonight, things will calm down and both Kurt and Rachel will be over it. He’ll make it up to them, Finn promises himself.
Thankfully, Rachel doesn’t seem interested in drawing it out any more either, so as students noisily spill out of their classrooms, she starts telling him about the new movie musical she’s heard is in the works, and why she suspects it will be terrible. Finn makes a heroic attempt to fake enthusiasm. She seems to appreciate it.
--
That night, the silence in Rachel’s room is almost deafening.
There was no problem getting in; Rachel’s Dad is the only one Finn’s afraid will pry into stuff and, with him away, Finn and Kurt can just take off their shoes and join Rachel in her room without any questions asked.
Now, though, they’re all arranged with many feet of space between them, rather than in their usual haphazard tangle. Finn is sitting on Rachel’s bed, sprawled against the pillows, while Rachel perches on her desk chair and Kurt is seated on a cushion on the floor (he claims that proximity to the glittery stickers on her desk gives him hives, and he’s been subtly avoiding Finn all day). Rachel has turned on some soundtrack or other to disguise whatever they say, should her Daddy decide to listen in for once, and Finn pretends that he’s listening to the lyrics rather than shifting uncomfortably in the awkward silence.
Rachel, predictably, is the first to speak. “Kurt, I think you should explain to us what happened this morning. You wouldn’t say anything about it when I asked because we were surrounded by other students, but now we’re not in public anymore and I would like to know what prompted this.”
Kurt finally looks up from the playbill he’s been absently flipping through and sets it neatly to the side. His eyes slide from Rachel to Finn warily, and he takes a deep breath, smoothes his bangs, and folds his hands in his lap. “As I told Rachel, I was talking to Mercedes this morning and she started asking questions.” From his tight expression, Finn doesn’t feel like he needs to ask what kind of questions they were, but Kurt continues anyway. “She’s seen the way Rachel and I are suddenly friendly; I explained it away as a night of unexpectedly bonding over taste in musicals, and she believed it.” His mouth twists unhappily. “It was harder to come up with a good lie about the hickeys.” Finn notices, for the first time, the edge of a bruise above the top of Kurt’s scarf. He doesn’t remember making that mark, but from the way Rachel is looking guiltily to the side, he’s probably not the one responsible. Kurt suddenly explodes, “I don’t enjoy lying to her, you know. Mercedes is my best friend; she tells me everything, and I’ve told her I’d never lie to her about something important.” He turns to Finn, and the look is almost pleading but too intense and Finn can sense where this is going. “I’d like to think that this is something important.”
“Kurt, I know, but this is Mercedes,” Finn says urgently, hoping it will get through to him. “Look, she’s awesome, but she tells people stuff. Seriously, when she told everyone but me about Puck and Quinn? I’m still kinda pissed about all that, but the point is, that was pretty much life-or-death shit and everyone knew in a week.”
Kurt bristles and looks ready to jump to Mercedes’ defense, but Rachel pipes up with a painfully sincere, “Technically, she only told the majority of the glee club. It never spread to the whole school as a result, even though that’s the sort of thing Jacob Ben Israel would love to ferret out if he caught even the slightest hint of a rumor.”
Kurt wrinkles his nose as if he’s not sure whether agreeing with Rachel will help his case or not.
Finn takes advantage of his indecision to urgently say, “Look, the thing is, it’s not a big deal. It’s not like you’re telling anyone else about it, so she can’t be pissed about that. I haven’t told Puck or anything, and Rachel hasn’t -” he realizes that his pause for thought has gone on a second too long and frantically corrects himself, “Rachel hasn’t told anyone at all.”
Rachel, thankfully, doesn’t seem to catch the hesitation and just sighs as Kurt tightly says, “You want to keep it a secret, then.” It’s not a question, and Finn shoots him a worried look because Kurt’s expression is suddenly pinched like it gets just before he starts getting really nasty.
Before Finn can say anything, Rachel rides right over him. “I think that’s something we need to discuss, actually. I originally thought that keeping the nature of our relationship a secret would be a good idea, but at that point I was thinking in the short term and taking into consideration the fact that we didn’t know whether we would be able to sustain a relationship between the three of us. Now that we’ve proved we can maintain a stable three-way dynamic and are in no immediate danger of breaking up and rendering any coming-out pointless and unnecessarily dramatic, it’s my opinion that we need to have a serious talk about that.”
Finn is mostly impressed that she was able to get all of that out without passing out, but he lost her train of thought about halfway through and Kurt is nodding thoughtfully at her. In matters of planning, Finn usually considers Kurt to be the moderating force on Rachel, but he knows that Rachel was just saying something about going public and, when it comes to that, Kurt is by far the most vocal advocate of doing something Finn is deeply uncomfortable with. Long story short, if Kurt is agreeing with whatever Rachel just said, Finn is almost positive that he won’t like it.
“What?” he says, hoping that he’s wrong.
“Rachel thinks we need to talk about going public about the relationship,” Kurt translates. The look he gives Finn is still several degrees cooler than usual, and there’s something very measuring about it.
It seems like both Rachel and Kurt are waiting for him to say something, so Finn blurts out, “Why do we need to talk about it? It’s going fine right now. I don’t get why you both want to - to pick at it.” He gestures helplessly, some of his frustration seeping into the gesture.
“That’s the point,” Rachel says, leaning forward slightly. “Before, there was a chance that things would completely fall apart at any given moment. Now, we’ve successfully beaten the odds and established a stable relationship. Admitting that to the world at large is a logical next step.”
Finn shakes his head vigorously. “No. Guys, you know I’m all about,” he hesitates and waves his hand in a gesture that encompasses all of them, “this, but we can’t. There was enough gossip when people found out that Rachel and I were back together.”
“So you’re scared of what people will say.” Kurt is outright glaring now, sitting stiffly on his cushion and, although he’s a few feet below Finn, it still feels like Kurt’s looking down his nose at him. “Why should that even matter to you?”
Finn scowls. He doesn’t expect Kurt to get it - this is, after all, the guy who wore a sweater that could have technically qualified as a dress the other day. “Look, you don’t care what people think, I get it. We all get that,” he can’t stop himself from adding, a little too pointedly. “But guess what? I do.”
Rachel has crossed her arms and is sitting back in her chair, suddenly looking stung, and Kurt is glaring even harder.
Finn throws his hands in the air. “Okay, fine. So we tell people. Then what?” He answers before either of them can, especially because it looks like Kurt is more than ready to snap something back at him. “We get made fun of, all three of us. You’ll both get slushied even more than usual, even our friends will be weirded out, and Jesus, Kurt, what do you think the guys will do to us two?” Rachel is pressing her lips together and Kurt’s eyes are blazing, but Finn can’t believe that the two of them haven’t thought about this. Or maybe they have but don’t care, because neither of them looks really surprised. Finn presses on, angry, but needing them to understand why they have to still keep it a secret. “They’re not gonna care that you didn’t turn me completely gay or whatever, they’re still gonna act like you did. You think what they do to you now is bad? If they find out, they might hurt you for real. Both of us, probably.”
“And you don’t think it would be worth it?” Kurt’s voice is low and clipped, and he’s gone dangerously still.
Finn is well aware that a yes-or-no answer at this point would be suicide, so he just shakes his head in exasperation and says, “That’s the thing. We don’t have to.”
Rachel’s eyes are darting between them, and she still looks like she’s holding back words by a major force of will.
Kurt takes a second to respond. He’s gritted his teeth and is looking at Finn like he’s two wrong comments away from biting him or something. “It’s fine if you’re public about your relationship with Rachel, though,” he says in that too-calm tone. Finn furrows his brows because, yeah, that is fine. People care a little, but he’s hardly going to get shoved in the hallways for it. “You can hold hands with her in public, and kiss her in the hallways and do duets with her in glee club, and that’s not an issue?” Finn continues to stare at him, waiting for the point, as Kurt keeps talking. “But if I do any of those things with either of you,” (Finn wants to protest that Kurt can easily do all of those with Rachel, except for maybe kissing, without anyone noticing, but Kurt is looking steadily angrier as he goes on) “then it’s the end of the world. We all become social pariahs if I so much as touch you outside of one of our rooms!” By the time he finishes, Kurt’s face is flushed and his eyes are shining a little too brightly.
Finn is the first to look away. He tries to ignore the guilt that’s jostling with his irritation, but the reproachful look he finds that he’s getting from Rachel doesn’t help.
She pushes herself up from her chair and crosses the room to kneel down next to Kurt, hesitating a second before awkwardly patting his shoulder. Finn looks away as she quietly asks, “Would it be appropriate if I hugged you now?” It doesn’t stop him from hearing Kurt’s ragged laugh in response, but at least he doesn’t have to see anything that might make him feel worse about the situation.
“I’m jealous,” Kurt admits after an awkwardly quiet minute that Finn spends reading the names on Rachel’s Cabaret poster. Kurt sounds calmer than before, so Finn turns back cautiously. Rachel has squeezed onto the cushion next to him and has one of his hands clasped tightly in both of hers. “I see you two in the halls and I feel like - like a third wheel, at best. Maybe not even that.”
Rachel frowns at him and squeezes his hand tight enough that Finn can see him wince.
“Okay,” Kurt allows, “I know that you don’t see it that way.” Finn rolls his eyes, not missing the emphasis Kurt put on the “‘you” and the accompanying significant glare at Finn himself.
“I agree with Kurt,” Rachel says firmly. “The clandestine sneaking around was fun at first; to be honest, I was enjoying the novelty of pretending to keep a forbidden love secret, but it’s not as exciting anymore. Although we don’t have to worry about attending prom together or any other major landmarks this year, I would like to perform publicly with the two of you and I dislike having to second-guess my song choices for being too obviously romantic.”
Finn flops back against the pillows and groans. They still aren’t getting it, he realizes. “Guys,” he says, momentarily muffled as he scrubs a hand over his face wearily, “look, I want to do all that stuff as much as you do. But we’re in high school. In Lima. There’s no way we can do all that and get away with it.”
“That isn’t the point,” Kurt says insistently. “Yes, there will be bullying. We’ll probably get a lot of strange looks, and there will be some stupid rumors on Jacob Ben Israel’s blog. But we’ll deal with them.”
“We’ll deal with them together,” Rachel amends archly. “And with the glee club to back us up, we can avoid the worst of it.” She leans against Kurt’s side and he turns away from Finn long enough to press a quick kiss into her hair.
“Speaking of glee, what songs were you considering?” Kurt asks her. Finn briefly wonders if he’s being given the cold shoulder, but then remembers how depressingly easy it is to derail both Kurt and Rachel with the promise of performing. “I was thinking about ‘3’ by Britney Spears.”
Rachel brightens and twists around to face Kurt. “I was considering ‘Two Ladies’ from Cabaret,” she says, a manic gleam entering her eyes, and Finn groans again as he realizes exactly how difficult it will be to dissuade her from going public now that she thinks it will open up new musical opportunities. “The revival version features a man singing in falsetto as one of the ‘ladies’ and, if you didn’t object to singing the part, I think it would easily fall in your range. I would want to re-arrange the Emcee’s part to divide the melody more evenly between all three performers, but I sincerely think we could pull it off if we cut the section that implies simulated intercourse.”
Kurt tilts his head to the side and looks at her fondly. “And to think that I initially hoped Finn would get bored with you.”
Rachel gasps and lets go of Kurt’s hand with one of hers so that she can swat his arm. “Kurt, that’s horrible!” Kurt raises an eyebrow and looks at her, unimpressed, until she flushes and admits, “Yes, well, I may have hoped for the same at the very beginning.”
Kurt gives her a smile and a quick kiss on the lips.
Finn clears his throat, hoping that maybe since they’ve apparently moved on, they can just forget about the argument and make out instead. “So, are we good?” he ventures.
Kurt turns to glare at him, and Finn’s pretty sure he hasn’t forgotten yet, after all.
Rachel also glares for a second, but then her eyes widen suddenly, as if in inspiration, and she smiles and slowly turns to face Kurt, who gives her a wary look. (Finn is feeling a bit leery himself - when Rachel is ”inspired,” the results are either utterly brilliant or completely batshit.)
Kurt’s eyes widen and he makes a muffled sound as Rachel launches herself at him, tackling him to the floor and kissing him with more than her usual enthusiasm. Finn blinks. Kurt flails helplessly for a second, but he isn’t making a serious effort to escape, because even if Finn sometimes finds it really hard to remember that Kurt has enough muscle to send a football, like, forty yards, he’s still way stronger physically than anyone else Finn has been with and could get away from Rachel in seconds if he wanted. Eventually, though, he gives in and pulls Rachel more firmly on top of him, resting one hand on her waist and using the other to hold back her hair. (Rachel continuously refuses to pull her hair back for make-out sessions, no matter how strenuously Kurt complains about it getting everywhere.)
Finn figures that’s his cue to join in, so he slides off the bed and kneels down next to them, reaching out a hand to smooth out a lock of Rachel’s hair. Kurt swats his hand away without looking. Finn creases his brow and tries again, with the same result, only harder. “Hey,” he protests, baffled.
Kurt and Rachel pull apart and turn creepily similar glares at him (it’s pretty much the only thing about the two of them together that Finn hates). “If you’re going to deny things in public, then I see no reason we shouldn’t do the same in private,” Rachel says archly.
Finn throws his hands up and makes a frustrated noise. “That’s not the same at all!” he protests immediately. “I’m just looking out for all of us.”
“By making me your dirty little secret and lying about the full nature of your relationship with Rachel?” Kurt shoots back, and Finn is almost surprised by the venom in his voice.
“It’s not like that,” Finn tries to say, quickly becoming annoyed by Kurt’s insistence on something he knows Finn doesn’t want to talk about.
Rachel rides over him, though, resting a hand on the floor beside Kurt so that she’s supporting some of her own weight and saying, “I don’t like keeping things like this a secret, and you know that Kurt doesn’t either. I’m beginning to feel like your unwillingness to be open reflects some deep shame about our relationship, and I feel very uncomfortable about that.”
“Look,” Finn explodes, raising his voice without realizing it, “you both know why I don’t want to admit to - to this, but you keep pushing, and it’s making me uncomfortable! Is it that hard to understand that I don’t want people to know?”
Kurt scowls at him, even though he’s still pinned under Rachel. “So, what, Rachel and I have to lie to make you comfortable? Would you prefer that I went back in the closet, too? Should we all just preemptively give ourselves slushie facials every day to keep the bullies off our backs for being in glee club?”
Kurt’s chest is heaving and his face is blotchy and flushed, and Finn feels himself getting even more pissed at Kurt’s anger. They have a good thing going, but now Kurt and Rachel want to screw with it? Fine, then. Finn pushes himself to his feet and heads for the door. “You know what? When you two want to talk without it turning into a freaking temper tantrum, let me know.”
As he swings the door open with more force than strictly necessary, Kurt yells at him, “I drove you here, Finn! What are you going to do, walk?”
Finn almost stops because he sort of had forgotten in his anger, but he keeps going and yells back without turning around, “Maybe I am!”
He can hear Rachel scrambling off Kurt and trying to follow, calling his name, but he breaks into a speedwalk that can easily outpace her shorter strides and storms out of the house without responding.
Finn regrets the decision to walk after the first ten minutes, but he consoles himself that the stitch in his side can’t be any more uncomfortable than the ride back would have been.
--
Neither of them talks to him the next day at school. Finn isn’t sure if he’s relieved or disappointed that they don’t even try. He does feel a little strange walking down the halls without Rachel holding his hand or clinging to his arm with her usual proprietary beaming look, and he has to tell himself that he’s not hurt at all when Kurt turns up his nose and walks faster when they pass each other between classes.
He passes by them together once, both leaning against the lockers and facing each other, Kurt pushing a lock of hair behind Rachel’s ear after fussing with her part for a minute. They both have soft, sad looks on their faces, but when Rachel sees Finn, it hardens into a glare and when Kurt looks to see what she’s looking at, his lips twist and he turns back to Rachel, grasping one of her hands tightly until she looks away from Finn with a sniff. Finn storms past them with as little eye contact as possible.
Half the glee club is already there when Kurt walks into the room for their afternoon practice, but thankfully, no one notices it when he hesitates in the doorway before stalking to the side of the risers farthest from where Finn’s sitting with Puck and sits on an end chair, refusing to so much as look at Finn. Finn scowls again but doesn’t say anything; unfortunately, Puck takes it as a look of disapproval aimed at the story he was telling (something about some Cheerio Finn doesn’t know and now will never be able to look in the eye) and rolls his eyes, smirking something about Finn being a loser virgin. Finn opens his mouth to retort that he’s not a virgin and hasn’t been one for months now, and besides, he has Puck beat on that front because Puck still hasn’t had that threesome he keeps going on about wanting and Finn totally has - but then he realizes that he can’t say anything about any of that without it being complete social suicide. It does suck a little, he gets why Rachel and Kurt don’t want to keep it a total secret, but he has so much to lose, and the idea of it terrifies him.
Finn sighs and prepares himself for the ridicule to continue for the rest of the period, as Puck is obviously gearing up to mock him some more, but he stops when Rachel sweeps into the room ahead of Mr. Schue. Finn feels himself tensing up. When Kurt gets mad, it’s apparently a quiet, cold thing that cuts deeper than he expected but stays pretty private, but, well, this is Rachel. When she stays quiet for a long time, it’s just a sign that she’s gearing up for something really loud.
Sure enough, everyone does notice this time. All eyes go to her when she stops dead in the doorway, staring very obviously at Finn with an expression that somehow manages to convey both anguish and reproach, with more than a hint of deep disappointment. Then she turns her head sharply away, as if she can’t bear to look at him, and marches dramatically to the other side of the room, seating herself in the spot beside Kurt. Finn tries not to watch, but finds himself having to turn away anyway when Kurt reaches out and grips Rachel’s hand.
He ignores Puck’s incredulous, “Dude, what did you do?” and the baffled, concerned look Mr. Schue gives him as he enters behind Rachel. It’s a little harder to brush off the openly speculative glances Jesse shoots his way (he’s seen the way Jesse still looks at Rachel, even as he’s tried to integrate a little more into the club now that she’s ignoring him), but he manages. The rehearsal crawls along at a snail’s pace, and Finn can’t pay attention, even though Mr. Schue is getting really emphatic about needing to get serious if they’re ever going to beat Vocal Adrenaline. When Finn accidentally looks over a couple of times, Rachel seems to have forgotten their personal drama for the moment and is looking worryingly thoughtful as Mr. Schue goes on about needing to discover their enemy’s weakness.
Finn slings his backpack over his shoulder and dashes out of the choir room the second Mr. Schue waves them out, hopefully evading any attempt to interrogate him and not giving Kurt or Rachel a chance to corner him (he doesn’t let himself think that they might not even try). He bowls over a chair on the way out, but no one manages to stop him.
The next two days go by in a similarly awkward, isolated fashion. Finn feels strangely off balance without Rachel’s warmth pressed up against his side, and he had never really realized how many times a day Kurt would brush past him in the halls, or give him a look, unsubtle and (probably unconsciously) adoring, from across a classroom. He feels… adrift. It’s far more unpleasant than he’d expected, and he gets pissed at himself when he realizes that he’s taking the long way to walk past Kurt and Rachel’s lockers during passing periods. Puck (on some kick where he tries to be nice in an attempt to get Quinn to like him again) keeps giving Finn “friendly” shoulder-punches in what is apparently his version of comfort over the budding rumors of Finn and Rachel’s breakup, which have spread from the curious members of Glee club to the rest of the school via Jacob Ben Israel’s ecstatic blog posts.
Friday is probably the most unpleasant, although he’d expected to be at least sort of used to the distance that’s sprung up between him and the other two by then. Instead, Finn gets Santana striking up an attempt to hit on him during lunch in a manner that’s admittedly tempting but also absolutely terrifying (and makes Rachel glare at him from across the lunch room), Mercedes giving him confused but dangerous looks and repeatedly positioning herself between him and Kurt, and Mr. Schue taking him aside after a particularly uncomfortable glee rehearsal (Rachel’s belt-it-to-the-heavens performance of some Broadway song, while predictably good, is also bitter enough to give him awkward flashbacks to “Gives You Hell,” and that’s not a moment Finn wants to relive, ever). And then Friday night dinner happens.
Since that first time the Finn-Kurt-Rachel thing happened, the Hudson-Hummel “family dinners” have become much more bearable. With nights (and the occasional lazy morning, if someone’s parents are out) spent curled up with Rachel in idle conversation, Finn and Kurt have learned to get along despite the fact that they still fundamentally don’t understand each other about half the time. There’s a bit of awkwardness when Finn thinks too hard about the fact that the reason these dinners happen is that he and Kurt are supposed to be learning to be brothers, but Kurt respects his dad too much to play footsie or anything, so there’s not as much weirdness as Finn had initially expected. This time, though, the easy exchange of stories and explanations is gone, and Finn is left frowning across the table at Kurt, who still refuses to look him in the eye and goes out of his way to only talk to Finn’s mom and Burt.
Even the adults eventually notice that something is going on between the two of them (Finn’s never pretended to be a good liar, and that, he spitefully thinks, is really the only difference between his and Kurt’s acting skills). Neither parent says anything, other than Finn’s mom’s cautious question of, “Is everything okay?” but it’s clear from her frown and Burt’s disappointed look that they’ve noticed the awkward tension.
“If you boys need to talk about anything…” Burt offers as he signs the receipt, he and Finn’s mom exchanging a significant look.
Finn widens his eyes in an attempt at looking innocent and shakes his head quickly, just as Kurt awkwardly laughs and waves a hand, saying, “No, no, we’re fine, but thanks.” Burt gives them both an unconvinced look but leaves it at that, and Kurt continues to not meet Finn’s eyes as they walk out to the parking lot and get into their separate cars. Finn scowls and decides that if Kurt isn’t going to try, he isn’t, either.
By the end of the weekend, Finn really wishes that Kurt would try. Or Rachel.
He plays video games to distract himself, re-learning all the old tricks he’d halfway forgotten with how much time he was spending with the other two, but it doesn’t stop him from glancing at the clock on Saturday night and thinking ”this is when Kurt would show up to drive me to Rachel’s,” or ”this is when Rachel would try to start a serious conversation about our chances at Regionals” and, okay, the latter is appropriate roughly every fifteen minutes, but still. Finn eventually throws down the controller and lets his avatar die a gory death. Even computer-generated zombies aren’t enough to distract him, for the first time he can remember. It doesn’t help that he’s sort of horny again; with two partners willing to help out, he hasn’t had time to get frustrated for long, but now he’s back to himself, and it’s annoying, especially on top of the uncomfortable emotional side of the mess.
He catches himself reaching for his phone at least three times, but each time, he reminds himself that it’s their move; he told them to come to him when they were ready to talk and, judging by everything that’s been happening, neither of them are, yet.
The next week just sucks.
It starts when Rachel, acting on what Finn pretends - maybe hopes, because it would mean she cares - is despair-fueled insanity (but might actually be a result of hanging out with that bastard Jesse lately, according to Puck), spies on Vocal Adrenaline, then reports back to New Directions in a state Finn has heard his mother describe as a “tizzy.” Somehow, and Finn will never know why, that leads to Mr. Schue wanting them all to dress up like Lady Gaga. Although Finn, after a day of panicked brainstorming, puts his foot down and manages to save the day by suggesting the guys do KISS, the girls (and Kurt, with irritating predictability) still take it seriously and costume themselves in outfits that, frankly, weird the hell out of Finn.
He sort of gets why Tina would do it, since she dresses weird on a regular basis and the blonde bubble get-up is not too terribly unusual, given her usual leather and lace. Mercedes’ seems weird but at least subdued when compared to the others, and Rachel’s new dress isn’t terrible, once Kurt sees her stuffed animal toga, looks simultaneously horrified and offended, and is later spotted bundling her into his car after school to do something about it. Santana’s, though, is terrifying because it means that Finn can’t see her eyes and this is Santana. Quinn’s gets her stuck in doorways at least once that Finn sees, and Brittany’s involves a lobster. Finn doesn’t want to know anything about that. And then there’s Kurt, and the less said about that (it’s a dress - no matter what Kurt says when Finn hears Artie questioning him, about the original being from some designer - it’s still a dress with freaking high heels), the better.
He wants to say something about it, particularly to Kurt because, dude, and he thinks maybe he could even put a stop to it because there’s no way that the over-the-top costumes worn in school aren’t going to get someone’s ass kicked. He doesn’t say anything, though, because he still can’t talk to Rachel or Kurt, and he’s not close enough with any of the other girls to say anything to them. Besides, it takes him forever to figure out how to put on his KISS makeup, especially since he has to dodge his mom’s questions about why he can’t ask Kurt or Rachel when he tries to get her to help.
The stuff at school manages to get even worse when Azimio and Karofsky take the entire thing as a personal insult. They start getting seriously weird about it, cornering Finn in the bathroom and, from what he hears during outraged rants in the choir room (courtesy of Tina, mostly, and Quinn, who takes it up on her behalf), shoving even the girls in the hallways. They’re being such unbelievable assholes overall that Finn starts to wonder if Lady Gaga ran over Azimio’s dog or something.
All the weirdness doesn’t help with how Finn is starting to miss Rachel and Kurt; his first thought after the bathroom thing is to find them and complain about it, letting them soothe him and assure him that he’s great the way he is (Rachel) and that Azimio and Karofsky are just idiots whose opinions don’t matter (Kurt, but probably with more creative insults). But then he remembers what Azimio and Karofsky said about him turning gay, and he flushes, almost wishing he could deny it for real. He’s gotten past being weirded out by his interest in Kurt but, even though Rachel insists that bisexuality or even “fluid heterosexuality” is totally okay and normal, if anyone found out, they wouldn’t bother with any word other than “gay,” unless it was something crueler. Himself, he doesn’t feel like there’s anything wrong with what he’s been doing, not anymore. Still, he can’t deal with people looking at him like he’s a freak, like they’ve been looking at Kurt and even Rachel all week - even if something deep inside him aches every time he sees one of them walk by or sit with someone who’s not him during glee club.
He almost pulls Kurt aside to talk to him during the week, after all - Rachel’s been off on her own planet for days, and seeing her hovering around Jesse is too much of a deterrent for Finn - just to see if he can’t convince him to tone it down, make himself less of a target (and maybe see if he’s ready to talk, because Finn thinks he might be almost ready to listen). When he tries, though, Kurt gives him a cold look, the looking-down-his-nose effect no doubt assisted by the ridiculous heels - heels - he’s wearing, and coolly informs Finn, “I have nothing to say to you,” before clicking past in a rush of silver fabric and rhinestones. Finn rolls his eyes in frustration and ignores the weird sting in his chest.
Watching Rachel is almost worse. She’s apparently having some mama drama of her own, which the entire club finds out about secondhand, and makes it impossible for Finn to talk to her. He wants to, if only to see how she’s doing, because she has this sad, reserved look at the start of the week that he really doesn’t like, but it goes away without warning after a few days. She sits between Kurt and Jesse during glee all week, oblivious to the suspicious glares Kurt keeps shooting at Jesse and the resentful ones Finn can’t help aiming at all of them, and pays little attention to anyone else, even when Finn does try to casually ask her what’s up.
Finn is still stewing over all of this on Friday and, of course, the stress makes him forget his music in his locker just before glee. He briefly debates going without it and just reading off someone else’s until he gets the hang of it - it never takes him long - but he knows that Jesse has never once forgotten his. And he doesn’t want to look like a slacker in front of Rachel when that asshole is waiting in the wings, hoping that she will officially break up with Finn so that he can swoop in like some insane, show choir-obsessed bat and steal her again. Finn grimaces at the weird mental image and turns around resignedly, jogging back towards his locker. He figures that if he goes fast enough, he’ll still be in time.
He almost doesn’t turn down that one hallway, but then he faintly hears a familiar voice, hoarse like it usually only gets after a few hours of the three of them tumbling around together - or when Kurt’s been crying. Then the shaking words register: “Go ahead. Hit me.” Finn curses and looks down the hall.
Sure enough, there’s a glint of silver behind a wall of red and yellow - Karofsky and Azimio, judging by the build and the letter jackets, with Kurt backed up into a dead end. He catches a glimpse of Kurt’s face, and he’s defiant but scared - scared like he never was during the dumpster tosses or when someone casually shoved him into something. Finn doesn’t know what’s going on, but he hears “I believe I will” and Karofsky cracking his knuckles, and there’s no way that this is going to end well.
Finn doesn’t remember how he gets there, but he must have ran, because his feet hurt like he’d been pounding them hard on the floor and the next thing he knows, he’s saying something. He thinks it’s something like “No one’s hitting anyone,” because it’s the bravest-sounding thing he can think on such short notice, and Karofsky and Azimio are turning to face him. He feels hot and cold all at once, adrenaline pumping through him so hard he almost feels dizzy, though he tries to look as calm and in-control as he can. Azimio and Karofsky aren’t taller than him, especially with him in his KISS boots, but they’re broader and he’s seen Azimio take guys down on the field. There’s no way he’s going to win this fight, he acknowledges, as he distantly hears them sneer and call him a freak. It doesn’t matter, though, because right now, he can deal with the mockery, but there’s no way he’s letting them attack his - whatever, he can think about the confusing labels some other time.
Kurt is looking at him in stunned disbelief, and some selfish, practical part of Finn stores that look away for the future because, seriously, how often is he going to get that kind of awe directed at him? He figures it’ll help while he’s in traction after whatever Azimio and Karofsky do to him.
They both take a step forward, and Finn tries not to wince despite his haze of protective fury because, man, this is going to suck, but then there’s a familiar cocky voice behind him saying, “Yeah, but can you take all of us?” and Finn barely dares to turn around to see what has Azimio and Karofsky looking gobsmacked.
It’s everyone. The entire club is there, dressed like the freaks they all are, with Puck leading the way, predictably enthusiastic about the idea of beating someone up and getting to be a good guy because of it. Although he doesn’t let anything but cool confidence show, Finn feels like he could kiss all of them (except not, because then Rachel and Kurt would probably kill him).
Azimio and Karofsky both sneer, looking put out, and promise they’ll be back in a way Finn’s pretty sure they ripped from a Disney special or “The Terminator,” but then they’re gone. Finn feels his shoulders sag in relief. If he was dizzy from adrenaline before, the sudden drop now that the threat is gone has him almost needing to put out a hand to steady himself against the lockers. He doesn’t because that would negate whatever coolness he just built up, but he does take a shaky breath and shift a bit until he feels stable, even with the platform boots.
Mr. Schue comes walking down the hallway doing a slow-clap (which Finn thought was supposed to be a sarcastic thing, but he guesses that old people might not know that), and in the resultant moment of group solidarity, Finn leans down to Kurt (not by as much as usual, with the heels), and whispers, “You okay?”
Kurt looks at him, still wide-eyed but almost glowing with the same relief as Finn, and nods. “I am. Thank you.” It’s the first time he’s spoken directly to Finn since they fought, and Finn is almost overcome by the desire to kiss him, right there.
Instead, Finn blurts out, “Can you come over after school? I want to talk.” He’s a little pissed at himself for not holding out, but God, he misses both of them, and right now, he really wants to celebrate the fact that he and Kurt didn’t get beaten up. He almost doesn’t breathe while he waits for Kurt’s response, but when it comes, it’s a hesitant nod. Finn resists the urge to fist-pump. “Great!” he says, unable to hold back the wide grin that’s breaking across his face. “I’ll go ask Rachel now. See you there!”
Kurt is still watching him with a look that seems a bit dazed, but Finn is too busy pushing through the group to Rachel to try and decipher it yet. Rachel gives him a sharp look, but she nods and hesitates before lightly kissing him on the cheek, then ducks away from him between Mercedes and Quinn.
The fact that Jesse is glaring at him makes the moment that much sweeter.
--
Somehow, possibly because the universe had to make up for how well the thing worked out earlier, Finn is ten minutes late getting home. By the time he arrives, Kurt’s car is already in the driveway and, when he walks in, his mom smiles brightly at him and informs him that Rachel and Kurt are both upstairs, but it doesn’t sound like they’ve killed each other yet. Finn doesn’t have the heart to tell her that’s because they’ve been hooking up for the last month and get along better now as a result.
He bounds up the stairs, still not totally rid of the nervous energy from before, even though he belted along to classic rock in the car so loud his voice cracked and a neighboring driver honked at him. He stops just before the open door to his room and takes a deep breath. “Hey,” he says as casually as he can, taking the last few steps through the doorway.
Kurt and Rachel are both perched on his bed. Kurt has removed his wig and shoes, and Rachel’s sunglasses are resting on top of his head, for whatever reason. They pull their clasped hands apart as he enters and look at him. Rachel is giving him a cool look, uncharacteristically unreadable.
“Thanks,” Kurt says stiffly, breaking the silence. “For before, I mean. I know it’s the end of the assignment, but I would have hated to have to fix this costume again before putting it away.”
Finn shakes his head and pulls his desk chair over one-handed, slumping into it facing them. “I don’t think they were going after your costume that time, dude.”
Kurt shrugs. “Still.”
Rachel is fidgeting with the hem of her dress, but her eyes are fixed on Finn. He bites his lip under the scrutiny and tugs his wig off for something to do, sighing privately in relief at the cool air on his scalp. When he looks up, she and Kurt are still staring at him, as if waiting for something, so he blurts out, “So, Rachel, how was your week?” He sort of wants to kick himself for being lame as soon as he says it, but although she sighs and crosses her arms, she thankfully isn’t looking pissed at him.
“Oh, nothing too special happened,” she says, trying for an airy tone that is foiled by the blatant strain under it. She isn’t looking right at Finn anymore, but rather staring at a spot above his head. “I discovered who my mother was with assistance from Jesse, as you may have heard, and tried to reconnect with her, only to be rejected because she was looking for the baby she’d lost and not m- not a teenager who’d grown up without her influence. Apparently.” Kurt wrinkles his nose and scoots closer on the bed, reaching over to rest a hand on her shoulder. She sighs and a small amount of the tight tension in her shoulders melts away. “I’m fine. We had a discussion and decided that an amicable separation was best for now.”
Finn winces. “That sucks. You broke up with your mom?”
Kurt shoots him a glare but Rachel just hangs her head, curled hair falling loose around her face, and reaches up a hand to rest it over Kurt’s. “Something like that,” she agrees, not quite keeping the sadness out despite her determinedly upbeat tone. “She isn’t my mom, though. She’s my mother, but I’ve learned that’s not the same thing.” Kurt mumbles something under his breath as he squeezes her shoulder again, and she turns her head enough to glare at him. “Well, maybe if you weren’t insulting my fathers’ crafting ability at the time, I would have been more inclined to listen.”
Kurt rolls his eyes, and Finn recognizes the sign of yet another impending fight between the two of them. He can’t help wondering how they’re still talking to each other after a week on their own. “So,” he says loudly, cutting Kurt off before he can start pushing Rachel’s buttons, “that sounds like an interesting week. Um.” He realizes that he’s not sure what else to say without stepping into a minefield of missing parents talk. He grins nervously and tries to think fast.
“What did you actually want to talk about?” Kurt sighs, cutting into his floundering. Both Kurt and Rachel are looking at him now, intent.
Finn sighs and looks down at his hands before looking back at them. “Honestly? I didn’t plan that far ahead.” He swallows. If he goes on, he’s going to be putting more of himself out there than he wanted, but the past week has been miserable and he knows it’s a chance he has to take, so he admits, “I just wanted to see you guys again. I missed you.”
They’re both suddenly giving him soft looks, and some of the nervousness that’s been gnawing away at Finn’s stomach all afternoon abates. Rachel smiles a little. “I can only speak for myself, officially, but I’ve missed you, too,” she says, sad and guarded. Kurt shrugs and nods. “It’s just that, as much as I miss you when we’re apart, I also hate having to purposefully leave things out when people ask me about our relationship.” She wrinkles her nose briefly and admits, “Granted, the people asking are usually just Santana, who wants to make my life miserable, and Jesse, who I don’t think is completely over me, but the point still stands.” Kurt rolls his eyes and looks annoyed at the mention of Jesse.
Finn sighs and tries to scratch an itch at the end of his nose before he realizes that the last time he did that, he got white face paint everywhere. “Yeah, I know,” he says, shifting uncomfortably. “But you saw how people reacted when we were just wearing costumes for an assignment. There’s no way we’ll get away with it if the whole school knows what’s going on with us.” He doesn’t voice the nagging fear that whatever they have isn’t still going on. Neither of them contradict his use of present tense, though, so Finn does a mental fist-pump in victory.
“We know that,” Kurt says, frowning. He’s taken his hand off Rachel’s shoulder and is smoothing out a wrinkle in his leggings, not looking at Finn. “But, honestly, the harassment is mostly just Karofsky and Azimio. I don’t know if we can avoid them, but even if we couldn’t, they’d get bored eventually.”
Finn shakes his head. “I don’t think they would. They’re still on you for being gay, you know? And they called me bisexual just for being in glee club, there’s no way they’d let something like this go.”
Kurt is starting to frown, but Rachel jumps in, leaning forward slightly and fixing Finn with an intense stare. “Maybe they wouldn’t, but the rest of the club would be behind us. You heard them today, they don’t care if all of us are, well, freaks, or anything else.” She folds her hands in her lap and smiles. “We’d have support, even if they don’t fully understand at first.”
Kurt nods, finally looking up. “She’s right. They might not be comfortable with the idea, initially, but they wouldn’t reject us for it.”
Finn sighs and rolls his head back. The thing is, it has been exhausting to keep everything from their friends. He’s caught himself wishing he could just spill it to Puck or Mr. Schue a few times, but he’s been holding back because the consequences of them finding out could be humiliating. But now he’s remembering the sight of all of them in ridiculous makeup and wigs, standing together in a hallway and laughing because they were able to protect two of their own, and something in him snaps, a quiet loss of resistance. “Okay,” he breathes, hardly believing himself.
Kurt’s eyes look like saucers and Rachel’s jaw has dropped so far Finn could count her molars if he tried. She closes it with a snap and pulls herself together enough to stammer, “You mean-“
Finn shrugs. “We can tell the club. I mean, I don’t think we should let the whole school know just yet, and we’d have to tell everyone not to spill to anyone, especially Jacob or Coach Sylvester, but,” he swallows hard and makes himself finish, “I think I’d be okay with our friends knowing.”
Kurt is as stunned as he was in the hallway earlier, but he looks like he’s glowing. His mouth works soundlessly for a few seconds before he says, sounding dazed, “We’d have to tell our parents, too.”
“Whoa,” Finn says, immediately holding up his hands. “Whoa, maybe not the parents yet. I mean, I don’t think your dad would kill Rachel ‘cause she’s a girl, but he would have my head above the fireplace, man.”
Kurt is outright smiling now, and he waves a hand dismissively. “Let me take care of that. It will be awkward, but I think I can bring him around if I phrase it the right way and promise I won’t try to burn his flannel again for a few months.”
Rachel has been quietly clapping her hands in delight for at least a minute. “Yes, and I seriously doubt my fathers will have a problem with it. They like Kurt, and they’ll be delighted to know that you and I are back together, Finn. They’ve been worrying over this past week, attributing all of my mother-related dramatic silences to sadness over a breakup.” Her eyes shoot wide and she hastily rattles off, “That isn’t to say that I wasn’t deeply sad over the tacit break in our relationship, but it didn’t account for all of the run-throughs of my ‘Songs for Deeply-Felt Heartbreak’ playlist.”
Finn blinks, but turns to Kurt. “Are you sure we have to tell our parents?”
Kurt rolls his eyes. “Our parents are dating, Finn. They’ll find out eventually, and then they’ll tell each other. I barely talked my dad out of having you and your mom move in with us a month ago; they need to know.”
Finn sighs and mentally prepares himself for Friday night dinners to get really, really awkward. He’s not sure if suggesting they invite Rachel will make things better or worse, but maybe her surplus of energy could balance out the inevitable awkward moments.
“I would suggest,” Kurt starts, snapping into planning mode and sounding way too pleased with himself, “that we break the news to our parents tonight. It’s Friday, so we’ll have to do it individually before six, and then we can invite Rachel along for dinner and have a group conversation, if they want.”
Rachel nods firmly. “That sounds feasible. You’ll both have to come to my house afterwards to meet my fathers in a more official capacity than before, though. I expect they’ll have more questions than I’ll be able to answer in the interval between now and six. Where will we be having dinner?”
“It’s usually at Breadstix,” Kurt says and looks like he’s going to continue before Rachel cuts him off.
“That sounds very public for a first meeting as your girlfriend, as well as Finn’s, especially if we don’t want to make Finn too uncomfortable with the possibility of a public spectacle.” She purses her lips in thought. “Do you think it would be possible to order in, or to make a home-cooked meal? I’d be more than happy to help cook; I have extensive experience with heart-healthy vegan meals that are delicious despite their low fat content.”
Kurt considers this for a moment, then his eyes light up. By now, he and Rachel have turned so that they are more or less facing each other on the bed, and Finn has totally given up on having any control over this conversation. As Kurt and Rachel throw worryingly specific menu ideas back and forth, Finn sighs and reflects that at least they’re willing to respect his boundaries for going public.
“Um, guys?” Finn says, after Kurt and Rachel have been arguing about the necessity of a salad course in a vegan meal for at least two minutes, “It’s, like, almost three-thirty.”
They both look at him in surprise. Kurt sighs. “I guess we should get started, then. I’ll need to change before I try to explain to Dad, and Rachel-“
“I’ll come over at five-fifteen,” she offers promptly. “And I’ll bring the tabbouleh.”
Finn has no idea what that is, and isn’t sure he wants to find out.
Kurt and Rachel both stand up from the bed, and there’s a long moment where they all freeze, hesitant and no longer sure of where the boundaries lie. Rachel lifts her head, though, and steps forward so that she can rest a hand on Finn’s cheek and lean in to kiss him softly. “I love you, you know,” she says after she pulls away. There’s a smudge of black lipstick that’s transferred to her own lips, but Finn thinks she’s never looked more beautiful. Kurt’s standing close enough that she can turn around and tug him down to meet her lips as well and, once she’s opened her eyes again, she adds, “both of you.”
Kurt has left a hand resting on her back and makes no move to remove it as he glances between the two of them with a wry smile. “God help me, but I think I do too.” He shakes his head and steps closer so that he can dip down and kiss Finn as well.
Finn sort of feels like his chest is going to burst at any second, so rather than risk saying anything and sticking his foot in his mouth, he stands up and pulls both Kurt and Rachel into a tight hug, feeling Rachel wind her arms around both of them and nestle against his chest, her head lower than usual due to the platforms he never bothered to take off.
Kurt, however, makes an indignant noise and flaps a hand against Finn’s chest. “Finn,” he chides, “spikes!”
Finn grins sheepishly as Rachel laughs and the moment is lightened. He lets go of Kurt long enough for Kurt to unbuckle the costume piece that was apparently digging into his cheek and discard it on the floor, then pulls him back against him more comfortably.
They’ll have to go soon, he knows, and start preparing for what will probably be the most uncomfortable evening of their lives, and Finn will have to figure out how to wash off his face paint and then explain to his mother that he’s dating not only the girl she thinks he broke up with, but also the son of the man she’s dating, but for the moment he doesn’t care how convoluted things are. He’s got both of his whatevers in his arms, and it doesn’t seem like they want to leave any time soon.
Pairing: Finn/Kurt/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Up to Theatricality
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Author Notes: A special thank-you to oh_you_dork for beta-ing! And to _harmlessthings for poking me when necessary. This follows Nothing Beats Threes and This Two-for-One, and is still set in S1.
Summary: It turns out that getting the three of them together was the easy part.
Word Count: 10,397
Not every day is a good one. Kurt and Rachel are still working out the intricacies of being thoughtful towards each other; more than once, Finn has to snap at Kurt to not insult Rachel and expect her to let it roll off her back and, though Kurt is a little too good at standing up to Rachel’s accidental jabs sometimes, she still has an almost supernatural ability to say just the right thing to get Kurt’s hackles up. Admittedly, Finn himself is frequently the subject of warning looks or sharp retorts from the other two, but he’s slowly learning to stop talking once he notices one of them giving him an aggravated look.
The bad days aren’t always a result of volatile personalities, though.
“Rachel?” Finn asks cautiously. It’s after glee let out early and she’s standing at her locker, staring into it, which wouldn’t be an issue except that she hasn’t moved for the past few minutes. “Rachel, what’s up?”
She startles and slams her locker shut, spinning around to face him. “Finn!” she says, “I didn’t realize you were there!” He raises his eyebrows at her and waits for an explanation. He doesn’t always get why she does stuff, but the (usually) nice thing about Rachel is that she’s always more than willing to explain. She bites her lip and glances around the hallway for a moment before cautiously starting, “It’s Kurt.”
Finn’s brows draw together and he looks around the hallway, too, before venturing, “Okay? What’s up? I saw him first period and he was fine.” He can feel his heartbeat speeding up and his palms growing sweaty; he sort of hates the fact that his first thought is that something happened with the hockey jocks and now Kurt’s in the nurse’s office or has a broken arm or something. But after that one night Finn saw a bruise on Kurt’s shoulder from being shoved into a locker too hard, he’s been getting paranoid about that kind of thing in a way he never was before. Rachel isn’t crying or anything, though, so he figures it can’t be anything that bad. On the other hand, she’s biting her lip nervously and Finn doesn’t like the second thought that arrives either, which is that the one guy in their math class who keeps staring at Kurt actually made a move and now Kurt is breaking up with them.
“Mercedes was trying to talk to him again,” Rachel finally says, staring down the hall like the answers to whatever the problem is are at the end of it. Finn starts to sigh in relief. Rachel’s eyes snap back to Finn and she clarifies, significantly, “about us.”
“She doesn’t know, does she?” The words tumble anxiously out of Finn’s mouth before he can think about them.
Rachel scowls at him, and Finn knows that sigh means that if Kurt were around, Finn would be in trouble right now, but he’s not, so she just shakes her head ‘no.’ “He still hasn’t told her, but he wants to talk. Tonight.”
Finn frowns. “We’ve already talked, a lot.” They have an arrangement going and it’s working so far. As far as anyone but the three of them know, Finn and Rachel are finally officially an item, and the only other change is that Rachel and Kurt have started getting along. It isn’t so unusual that Kurt would want to spend time with his almost-stepbrother or new female friend or both together, so no one asks any questions so long as they resist the urge to indulge in PDA.
Mercedes is starting to notice things, though. Kurt has flat-out refused to cancel his weekly Project Runway night with Mercedes even in favor of date nights (Finn still feels a bit insulted, but Rachel has been sympathetic ever since Kurt compared it to someone asking her to give up her bi-weekly Barbra Night), but he’s been forced to cancel Saturday morning plans with her twice already due to ”nights in” accidentally becoming sleepovers. Also, there was that time Kurt came into Glee limping (they all agreed it was worth it, but Kurt still gives Rachel a wary look every time she suggests something new) and failed to come up with a suitably quick reply to Puck’s automatic jeer. The memory of Mercedes’ suspicious look, even not directed at him, still gives Finn nightmares.
“Well, he wants to talk again,” Rachel sighs. Then her lips press together and twitch downward at one corner, like they do when she’s trying not to say something, so Finn waits patiently for the moment when she inevitably says it. It doesn’t take long. “I think we need to, as well,” is what tumbles out. “Yes, things are functioning, but not as well as they could be if we would all put more effort into the relationship.” Finn is alarmed and opens his mouth to protest, but she steamrolls over him, shaking her head and saying, “No, don’t argue now. We’ll discuss it tonight when we have the time and privacy.”
She finally picks up the bag at her feet and starts to sling it onto her back until Finn hurries to take it from her and hoists it over his own shoulder. She smiles warmly at him, and some of the panic that’s taken residence in his gut quiets down. “We’ll meet at my house tonight. Only Daddy is home, and he’ll be busy with work.”
Finn follows her as she starts walking toward their next class, her flats clicking against the tile in the otherwise empty hallway. “What do your dads think of Kurt always coming over when I do?” he can’t help asking after a minute of silence. “They gotta have noticed something.”
Rachel shrugs. “They both think he’s precious, and they like that he tries to straighten things up before you two leave. They’re also proud of me for befriending other members of the gay community.” She hesitates for a second, and Finn glances down at her to see that her expression has shifted into something that’s simultaneously amused, uncomfortable, and disappointed. “They told me that it’s obvious he’s in love with you, though, and that you need to stop leading him on.”
Finn feels a pinch of guilt, like when he looks across the chorus room and sees Kurt staring at him and Rachel, but looking away as soon as he’s caught. “We’ll talk about it tonight, okay?” Finn says, silently pleading for the conversation to end right now. He feels sort of bad that they have to keep it a secret, but the other two know as well as he does why they can’t tell anyone. Maybe by tonight, things will calm down and both Kurt and Rachel will be over it. He’ll make it up to them, Finn promises himself.
Thankfully, Rachel doesn’t seem interested in drawing it out any more either, so as students noisily spill out of their classrooms, she starts telling him about the new movie musical she’s heard is in the works, and why she suspects it will be terrible. Finn makes a heroic attempt to fake enthusiasm. She seems to appreciate it.
--
That night, the silence in Rachel’s room is almost deafening.
There was no problem getting in; Rachel’s Dad is the only one Finn’s afraid will pry into stuff and, with him away, Finn and Kurt can just take off their shoes and join Rachel in her room without any questions asked.
Now, though, they’re all arranged with many feet of space between them, rather than in their usual haphazard tangle. Finn is sitting on Rachel’s bed, sprawled against the pillows, while Rachel perches on her desk chair and Kurt is seated on a cushion on the floor (he claims that proximity to the glittery stickers on her desk gives him hives, and he’s been subtly avoiding Finn all day). Rachel has turned on some soundtrack or other to disguise whatever they say, should her Daddy decide to listen in for once, and Finn pretends that he’s listening to the lyrics rather than shifting uncomfortably in the awkward silence.
Rachel, predictably, is the first to speak. “Kurt, I think you should explain to us what happened this morning. You wouldn’t say anything about it when I asked because we were surrounded by other students, but now we’re not in public anymore and I would like to know what prompted this.”
Kurt finally looks up from the playbill he’s been absently flipping through and sets it neatly to the side. His eyes slide from Rachel to Finn warily, and he takes a deep breath, smoothes his bangs, and folds his hands in his lap. “As I told Rachel, I was talking to Mercedes this morning and she started asking questions.” From his tight expression, Finn doesn’t feel like he needs to ask what kind of questions they were, but Kurt continues anyway. “She’s seen the way Rachel and I are suddenly friendly; I explained it away as a night of unexpectedly bonding over taste in musicals, and she believed it.” His mouth twists unhappily. “It was harder to come up with a good lie about the hickeys.” Finn notices, for the first time, the edge of a bruise above the top of Kurt’s scarf. He doesn’t remember making that mark, but from the way Rachel is looking guiltily to the side, he’s probably not the one responsible. Kurt suddenly explodes, “I don’t enjoy lying to her, you know. Mercedes is my best friend; she tells me everything, and I’ve told her I’d never lie to her about something important.” He turns to Finn, and the look is almost pleading but too intense and Finn can sense where this is going. “I’d like to think that this is something important.”
“Kurt, I know, but this is Mercedes,” Finn says urgently, hoping it will get through to him. “Look, she’s awesome, but she tells people stuff. Seriously, when she told everyone but me about Puck and Quinn? I’m still kinda pissed about all that, but the point is, that was pretty much life-or-death shit and everyone knew in a week.”
Kurt bristles and looks ready to jump to Mercedes’ defense, but Rachel pipes up with a painfully sincere, “Technically, she only told the majority of the glee club. It never spread to the whole school as a result, even though that’s the sort of thing Jacob Ben Israel would love to ferret out if he caught even the slightest hint of a rumor.”
Kurt wrinkles his nose as if he’s not sure whether agreeing with Rachel will help his case or not.
Finn takes advantage of his indecision to urgently say, “Look, the thing is, it’s not a big deal. It’s not like you’re telling anyone else about it, so she can’t be pissed about that. I haven’t told Puck or anything, and Rachel hasn’t -” he realizes that his pause for thought has gone on a second too long and frantically corrects himself, “Rachel hasn’t told anyone at all.”
Rachel, thankfully, doesn’t seem to catch the hesitation and just sighs as Kurt tightly says, “You want to keep it a secret, then.” It’s not a question, and Finn shoots him a worried look because Kurt’s expression is suddenly pinched like it gets just before he starts getting really nasty.
Before Finn can say anything, Rachel rides right over him. “I think that’s something we need to discuss, actually. I originally thought that keeping the nature of our relationship a secret would be a good idea, but at that point I was thinking in the short term and taking into consideration the fact that we didn’t know whether we would be able to sustain a relationship between the three of us. Now that we’ve proved we can maintain a stable three-way dynamic and are in no immediate danger of breaking up and rendering any coming-out pointless and unnecessarily dramatic, it’s my opinion that we need to have a serious talk about that.”
Finn is mostly impressed that she was able to get all of that out without passing out, but he lost her train of thought about halfway through and Kurt is nodding thoughtfully at her. In matters of planning, Finn usually considers Kurt to be the moderating force on Rachel, but he knows that Rachel was just saying something about going public and, when it comes to that, Kurt is by far the most vocal advocate of doing something Finn is deeply uncomfortable with. Long story short, if Kurt is agreeing with whatever Rachel just said, Finn is almost positive that he won’t like it.
“What?” he says, hoping that he’s wrong.
“Rachel thinks we need to talk about going public about the relationship,” Kurt translates. The look he gives Finn is still several degrees cooler than usual, and there’s something very measuring about it.
It seems like both Rachel and Kurt are waiting for him to say something, so Finn blurts out, “Why do we need to talk about it? It’s going fine right now. I don’t get why you both want to - to pick at it.” He gestures helplessly, some of his frustration seeping into the gesture.
“That’s the point,” Rachel says, leaning forward slightly. “Before, there was a chance that things would completely fall apart at any given moment. Now, we’ve successfully beaten the odds and established a stable relationship. Admitting that to the world at large is a logical next step.”
Finn shakes his head vigorously. “No. Guys, you know I’m all about,” he hesitates and waves his hand in a gesture that encompasses all of them, “this, but we can’t. There was enough gossip when people found out that Rachel and I were back together.”
“So you’re scared of what people will say.” Kurt is outright glaring now, sitting stiffly on his cushion and, although he’s a few feet below Finn, it still feels like Kurt’s looking down his nose at him. “Why should that even matter to you?”
Finn scowls. He doesn’t expect Kurt to get it - this is, after all, the guy who wore a sweater that could have technically qualified as a dress the other day. “Look, you don’t care what people think, I get it. We all get that,” he can’t stop himself from adding, a little too pointedly. “But guess what? I do.”
Rachel has crossed her arms and is sitting back in her chair, suddenly looking stung, and Kurt is glaring even harder.
Finn throws his hands in the air. “Okay, fine. So we tell people. Then what?” He answers before either of them can, especially because it looks like Kurt is more than ready to snap something back at him. “We get made fun of, all three of us. You’ll both get slushied even more than usual, even our friends will be weirded out, and Jesus, Kurt, what do you think the guys will do to us two?” Rachel is pressing her lips together and Kurt’s eyes are blazing, but Finn can’t believe that the two of them haven’t thought about this. Or maybe they have but don’t care, because neither of them looks really surprised. Finn presses on, angry, but needing them to understand why they have to still keep it a secret. “They’re not gonna care that you didn’t turn me completely gay or whatever, they’re still gonna act like you did. You think what they do to you now is bad? If they find out, they might hurt you for real. Both of us, probably.”
“And you don’t think it would be worth it?” Kurt’s voice is low and clipped, and he’s gone dangerously still.
Finn is well aware that a yes-or-no answer at this point would be suicide, so he just shakes his head in exasperation and says, “That’s the thing. We don’t have to.”
Rachel’s eyes are darting between them, and she still looks like she’s holding back words by a major force of will.
Kurt takes a second to respond. He’s gritted his teeth and is looking at Finn like he’s two wrong comments away from biting him or something. “It’s fine if you’re public about your relationship with Rachel, though,” he says in that too-calm tone. Finn furrows his brows because, yeah, that is fine. People care a little, but he’s hardly going to get shoved in the hallways for it. “You can hold hands with her in public, and kiss her in the hallways and do duets with her in glee club, and that’s not an issue?” Finn continues to stare at him, waiting for the point, as Kurt keeps talking. “But if I do any of those things with either of you,” (Finn wants to protest that Kurt can easily do all of those with Rachel, except for maybe kissing, without anyone noticing, but Kurt is looking steadily angrier as he goes on) “then it’s the end of the world. We all become social pariahs if I so much as touch you outside of one of our rooms!” By the time he finishes, Kurt’s face is flushed and his eyes are shining a little too brightly.
Finn is the first to look away. He tries to ignore the guilt that’s jostling with his irritation, but the reproachful look he finds that he’s getting from Rachel doesn’t help.
She pushes herself up from her chair and crosses the room to kneel down next to Kurt, hesitating a second before awkwardly patting his shoulder. Finn looks away as she quietly asks, “Would it be appropriate if I hugged you now?” It doesn’t stop him from hearing Kurt’s ragged laugh in response, but at least he doesn’t have to see anything that might make him feel worse about the situation.
“I’m jealous,” Kurt admits after an awkwardly quiet minute that Finn spends reading the names on Rachel’s Cabaret poster. Kurt sounds calmer than before, so Finn turns back cautiously. Rachel has squeezed onto the cushion next to him and has one of his hands clasped tightly in both of hers. “I see you two in the halls and I feel like - like a third wheel, at best. Maybe not even that.”
Rachel frowns at him and squeezes his hand tight enough that Finn can see him wince.
“Okay,” Kurt allows, “I know that you don’t see it that way.” Finn rolls his eyes, not missing the emphasis Kurt put on the “‘you” and the accompanying significant glare at Finn himself.
“I agree with Kurt,” Rachel says firmly. “The clandestine sneaking around was fun at first; to be honest, I was enjoying the novelty of pretending to keep a forbidden love secret, but it’s not as exciting anymore. Although we don’t have to worry about attending prom together or any other major landmarks this year, I would like to perform publicly with the two of you and I dislike having to second-guess my song choices for being too obviously romantic.”
Finn flops back against the pillows and groans. They still aren’t getting it, he realizes. “Guys,” he says, momentarily muffled as he scrubs a hand over his face wearily, “look, I want to do all that stuff as much as you do. But we’re in high school. In Lima. There’s no way we can do all that and get away with it.”
“That isn’t the point,” Kurt says insistently. “Yes, there will be bullying. We’ll probably get a lot of strange looks, and there will be some stupid rumors on Jacob Ben Israel’s blog. But we’ll deal with them.”
“We’ll deal with them together,” Rachel amends archly. “And with the glee club to back us up, we can avoid the worst of it.” She leans against Kurt’s side and he turns away from Finn long enough to press a quick kiss into her hair.
“Speaking of glee, what songs were you considering?” Kurt asks her. Finn briefly wonders if he’s being given the cold shoulder, but then remembers how depressingly easy it is to derail both Kurt and Rachel with the promise of performing. “I was thinking about ‘3’ by Britney Spears.”
Rachel brightens and twists around to face Kurt. “I was considering ‘Two Ladies’ from Cabaret,” she says, a manic gleam entering her eyes, and Finn groans again as he realizes exactly how difficult it will be to dissuade her from going public now that she thinks it will open up new musical opportunities. “The revival version features a man singing in falsetto as one of the ‘ladies’ and, if you didn’t object to singing the part, I think it would easily fall in your range. I would want to re-arrange the Emcee’s part to divide the melody more evenly between all three performers, but I sincerely think we could pull it off if we cut the section that implies simulated intercourse.”
Kurt tilts his head to the side and looks at her fondly. “And to think that I initially hoped Finn would get bored with you.”
Rachel gasps and lets go of Kurt’s hand with one of hers so that she can swat his arm. “Kurt, that’s horrible!” Kurt raises an eyebrow and looks at her, unimpressed, until she flushes and admits, “Yes, well, I may have hoped for the same at the very beginning.”
Kurt gives her a smile and a quick kiss on the lips.
Finn clears his throat, hoping that maybe since they’ve apparently moved on, they can just forget about the argument and make out instead. “So, are we good?” he ventures.
Kurt turns to glare at him, and Finn’s pretty sure he hasn’t forgotten yet, after all.
Rachel also glares for a second, but then her eyes widen suddenly, as if in inspiration, and she smiles and slowly turns to face Kurt, who gives her a wary look. (Finn is feeling a bit leery himself - when Rachel is ”inspired,” the results are either utterly brilliant or completely batshit.)
Kurt’s eyes widen and he makes a muffled sound as Rachel launches herself at him, tackling him to the floor and kissing him with more than her usual enthusiasm. Finn blinks. Kurt flails helplessly for a second, but he isn’t making a serious effort to escape, because even if Finn sometimes finds it really hard to remember that Kurt has enough muscle to send a football, like, forty yards, he’s still way stronger physically than anyone else Finn has been with and could get away from Rachel in seconds if he wanted. Eventually, though, he gives in and pulls Rachel more firmly on top of him, resting one hand on her waist and using the other to hold back her hair. (Rachel continuously refuses to pull her hair back for make-out sessions, no matter how strenuously Kurt complains about it getting everywhere.)
Finn figures that’s his cue to join in, so he slides off the bed and kneels down next to them, reaching out a hand to smooth out a lock of Rachel’s hair. Kurt swats his hand away without looking. Finn creases his brow and tries again, with the same result, only harder. “Hey,” he protests, baffled.
Kurt and Rachel pull apart and turn creepily similar glares at him (it’s pretty much the only thing about the two of them together that Finn hates). “If you’re going to deny things in public, then I see no reason we shouldn’t do the same in private,” Rachel says archly.
Finn throws his hands up and makes a frustrated noise. “That’s not the same at all!” he protests immediately. “I’m just looking out for all of us.”
“By making me your dirty little secret and lying about the full nature of your relationship with Rachel?” Kurt shoots back, and Finn is almost surprised by the venom in his voice.
“It’s not like that,” Finn tries to say, quickly becoming annoyed by Kurt’s insistence on something he knows Finn doesn’t want to talk about.
Rachel rides over him, though, resting a hand on the floor beside Kurt so that she’s supporting some of her own weight and saying, “I don’t like keeping things like this a secret, and you know that Kurt doesn’t either. I’m beginning to feel like your unwillingness to be open reflects some deep shame about our relationship, and I feel very uncomfortable about that.”
“Look,” Finn explodes, raising his voice without realizing it, “you both know why I don’t want to admit to - to this, but you keep pushing, and it’s making me uncomfortable! Is it that hard to understand that I don’t want people to know?”
Kurt scowls at him, even though he’s still pinned under Rachel. “So, what, Rachel and I have to lie to make you comfortable? Would you prefer that I went back in the closet, too? Should we all just preemptively give ourselves slushie facials every day to keep the bullies off our backs for being in glee club?”
Kurt’s chest is heaving and his face is blotchy and flushed, and Finn feels himself getting even more pissed at Kurt’s anger. They have a good thing going, but now Kurt and Rachel want to screw with it? Fine, then. Finn pushes himself to his feet and heads for the door. “You know what? When you two want to talk without it turning into a freaking temper tantrum, let me know.”
As he swings the door open with more force than strictly necessary, Kurt yells at him, “I drove you here, Finn! What are you going to do, walk?”
Finn almost stops because he sort of had forgotten in his anger, but he keeps going and yells back without turning around, “Maybe I am!”
He can hear Rachel scrambling off Kurt and trying to follow, calling his name, but he breaks into a speedwalk that can easily outpace her shorter strides and storms out of the house without responding.
Finn regrets the decision to walk after the first ten minutes, but he consoles himself that the stitch in his side can’t be any more uncomfortable than the ride back would have been.
--
Neither of them talks to him the next day at school. Finn isn’t sure if he’s relieved or disappointed that they don’t even try. He does feel a little strange walking down the halls without Rachel holding his hand or clinging to his arm with her usual proprietary beaming look, and he has to tell himself that he’s not hurt at all when Kurt turns up his nose and walks faster when they pass each other between classes.
He passes by them together once, both leaning against the lockers and facing each other, Kurt pushing a lock of hair behind Rachel’s ear after fussing with her part for a minute. They both have soft, sad looks on their faces, but when Rachel sees Finn, it hardens into a glare and when Kurt looks to see what she’s looking at, his lips twist and he turns back to Rachel, grasping one of her hands tightly until she looks away from Finn with a sniff. Finn storms past them with as little eye contact as possible.
Half the glee club is already there when Kurt walks into the room for their afternoon practice, but thankfully, no one notices it when he hesitates in the doorway before stalking to the side of the risers farthest from where Finn’s sitting with Puck and sits on an end chair, refusing to so much as look at Finn. Finn scowls again but doesn’t say anything; unfortunately, Puck takes it as a look of disapproval aimed at the story he was telling (something about some Cheerio Finn doesn’t know and now will never be able to look in the eye) and rolls his eyes, smirking something about Finn being a loser virgin. Finn opens his mouth to retort that he’s not a virgin and hasn’t been one for months now, and besides, he has Puck beat on that front because Puck still hasn’t had that threesome he keeps going on about wanting and Finn totally has - but then he realizes that he can’t say anything about any of that without it being complete social suicide. It does suck a little, he gets why Rachel and Kurt don’t want to keep it a total secret, but he has so much to lose, and the idea of it terrifies him.
Finn sighs and prepares himself for the ridicule to continue for the rest of the period, as Puck is obviously gearing up to mock him some more, but he stops when Rachel sweeps into the room ahead of Mr. Schue. Finn feels himself tensing up. When Kurt gets mad, it’s apparently a quiet, cold thing that cuts deeper than he expected but stays pretty private, but, well, this is Rachel. When she stays quiet for a long time, it’s just a sign that she’s gearing up for something really loud.
Sure enough, everyone does notice this time. All eyes go to her when she stops dead in the doorway, staring very obviously at Finn with an expression that somehow manages to convey both anguish and reproach, with more than a hint of deep disappointment. Then she turns her head sharply away, as if she can’t bear to look at him, and marches dramatically to the other side of the room, seating herself in the spot beside Kurt. Finn tries not to watch, but finds himself having to turn away anyway when Kurt reaches out and grips Rachel’s hand.
He ignores Puck’s incredulous, “Dude, what did you do?” and the baffled, concerned look Mr. Schue gives him as he enters behind Rachel. It’s a little harder to brush off the openly speculative glances Jesse shoots his way (he’s seen the way Jesse still looks at Rachel, even as he’s tried to integrate a little more into the club now that she’s ignoring him), but he manages. The rehearsal crawls along at a snail’s pace, and Finn can’t pay attention, even though Mr. Schue is getting really emphatic about needing to get serious if they’re ever going to beat Vocal Adrenaline. When Finn accidentally looks over a couple of times, Rachel seems to have forgotten their personal drama for the moment and is looking worryingly thoughtful as Mr. Schue goes on about needing to discover their enemy’s weakness.
Finn slings his backpack over his shoulder and dashes out of the choir room the second Mr. Schue waves them out, hopefully evading any attempt to interrogate him and not giving Kurt or Rachel a chance to corner him (he doesn’t let himself think that they might not even try). He bowls over a chair on the way out, but no one manages to stop him.
The next two days go by in a similarly awkward, isolated fashion. Finn feels strangely off balance without Rachel’s warmth pressed up against his side, and he had never really realized how many times a day Kurt would brush past him in the halls, or give him a look, unsubtle and (probably unconsciously) adoring, from across a classroom. He feels… adrift. It’s far more unpleasant than he’d expected, and he gets pissed at himself when he realizes that he’s taking the long way to walk past Kurt and Rachel’s lockers during passing periods. Puck (on some kick where he tries to be nice in an attempt to get Quinn to like him again) keeps giving Finn “friendly” shoulder-punches in what is apparently his version of comfort over the budding rumors of Finn and Rachel’s breakup, which have spread from the curious members of Glee club to the rest of the school via Jacob Ben Israel’s ecstatic blog posts.
Friday is probably the most unpleasant, although he’d expected to be at least sort of used to the distance that’s sprung up between him and the other two by then. Instead, Finn gets Santana striking up an attempt to hit on him during lunch in a manner that’s admittedly tempting but also absolutely terrifying (and makes Rachel glare at him from across the lunch room), Mercedes giving him confused but dangerous looks and repeatedly positioning herself between him and Kurt, and Mr. Schue taking him aside after a particularly uncomfortable glee rehearsal (Rachel’s belt-it-to-the-heavens performance of some Broadway song, while predictably good, is also bitter enough to give him awkward flashbacks to “Gives You Hell,” and that’s not a moment Finn wants to relive, ever). And then Friday night dinner happens.
Since that first time the Finn-Kurt-Rachel thing happened, the Hudson-Hummel “family dinners” have become much more bearable. With nights (and the occasional lazy morning, if someone’s parents are out) spent curled up with Rachel in idle conversation, Finn and Kurt have learned to get along despite the fact that they still fundamentally don’t understand each other about half the time. There’s a bit of awkwardness when Finn thinks too hard about the fact that the reason these dinners happen is that he and Kurt are supposed to be learning to be brothers, but Kurt respects his dad too much to play footsie or anything, so there’s not as much weirdness as Finn had initially expected. This time, though, the easy exchange of stories and explanations is gone, and Finn is left frowning across the table at Kurt, who still refuses to look him in the eye and goes out of his way to only talk to Finn’s mom and Burt.
Even the adults eventually notice that something is going on between the two of them (Finn’s never pretended to be a good liar, and that, he spitefully thinks, is really the only difference between his and Kurt’s acting skills). Neither parent says anything, other than Finn’s mom’s cautious question of, “Is everything okay?” but it’s clear from her frown and Burt’s disappointed look that they’ve noticed the awkward tension.
“If you boys need to talk about anything…” Burt offers as he signs the receipt, he and Finn’s mom exchanging a significant look.
Finn widens his eyes in an attempt at looking innocent and shakes his head quickly, just as Kurt awkwardly laughs and waves a hand, saying, “No, no, we’re fine, but thanks.” Burt gives them both an unconvinced look but leaves it at that, and Kurt continues to not meet Finn’s eyes as they walk out to the parking lot and get into their separate cars. Finn scowls and decides that if Kurt isn’t going to try, he isn’t, either.
By the end of the weekend, Finn really wishes that Kurt would try. Or Rachel.
He plays video games to distract himself, re-learning all the old tricks he’d halfway forgotten with how much time he was spending with the other two, but it doesn’t stop him from glancing at the clock on Saturday night and thinking ”this is when Kurt would show up to drive me to Rachel’s,” or ”this is when Rachel would try to start a serious conversation about our chances at Regionals” and, okay, the latter is appropriate roughly every fifteen minutes, but still. Finn eventually throws down the controller and lets his avatar die a gory death. Even computer-generated zombies aren’t enough to distract him, for the first time he can remember. It doesn’t help that he’s sort of horny again; with two partners willing to help out, he hasn’t had time to get frustrated for long, but now he’s back to himself, and it’s annoying, especially on top of the uncomfortable emotional side of the mess.
He catches himself reaching for his phone at least three times, but each time, he reminds himself that it’s their move; he told them to come to him when they were ready to talk and, judging by everything that’s been happening, neither of them are, yet.
The next week just sucks.
It starts when Rachel, acting on what Finn pretends - maybe hopes, because it would mean she cares - is despair-fueled insanity (but might actually be a result of hanging out with that bastard Jesse lately, according to Puck), spies on Vocal Adrenaline, then reports back to New Directions in a state Finn has heard his mother describe as a “tizzy.” Somehow, and Finn will never know why, that leads to Mr. Schue wanting them all to dress up like Lady Gaga. Although Finn, after a day of panicked brainstorming, puts his foot down and manages to save the day by suggesting the guys do KISS, the girls (and Kurt, with irritating predictability) still take it seriously and costume themselves in outfits that, frankly, weird the hell out of Finn.
He sort of gets why Tina would do it, since she dresses weird on a regular basis and the blonde bubble get-up is not too terribly unusual, given her usual leather and lace. Mercedes’ seems weird but at least subdued when compared to the others, and Rachel’s new dress isn’t terrible, once Kurt sees her stuffed animal toga, looks simultaneously horrified and offended, and is later spotted bundling her into his car after school to do something about it. Santana’s, though, is terrifying because it means that Finn can’t see her eyes and this is Santana. Quinn’s gets her stuck in doorways at least once that Finn sees, and Brittany’s involves a lobster. Finn doesn’t want to know anything about that. And then there’s Kurt, and the less said about that (it’s a dress - no matter what Kurt says when Finn hears Artie questioning him, about the original being from some designer - it’s still a dress with freaking high heels), the better.
He wants to say something about it, particularly to Kurt because, dude, and he thinks maybe he could even put a stop to it because there’s no way that the over-the-top costumes worn in school aren’t going to get someone’s ass kicked. He doesn’t say anything, though, because he still can’t talk to Rachel or Kurt, and he’s not close enough with any of the other girls to say anything to them. Besides, it takes him forever to figure out how to put on his KISS makeup, especially since he has to dodge his mom’s questions about why he can’t ask Kurt or Rachel when he tries to get her to help.
The stuff at school manages to get even worse when Azimio and Karofsky take the entire thing as a personal insult. They start getting seriously weird about it, cornering Finn in the bathroom and, from what he hears during outraged rants in the choir room (courtesy of Tina, mostly, and Quinn, who takes it up on her behalf), shoving even the girls in the hallways. They’re being such unbelievable assholes overall that Finn starts to wonder if Lady Gaga ran over Azimio’s dog or something.
All the weirdness doesn’t help with how Finn is starting to miss Rachel and Kurt; his first thought after the bathroom thing is to find them and complain about it, letting them soothe him and assure him that he’s great the way he is (Rachel) and that Azimio and Karofsky are just idiots whose opinions don’t matter (Kurt, but probably with more creative insults). But then he remembers what Azimio and Karofsky said about him turning gay, and he flushes, almost wishing he could deny it for real. He’s gotten past being weirded out by his interest in Kurt but, even though Rachel insists that bisexuality or even “fluid heterosexuality” is totally okay and normal, if anyone found out, they wouldn’t bother with any word other than “gay,” unless it was something crueler. Himself, he doesn’t feel like there’s anything wrong with what he’s been doing, not anymore. Still, he can’t deal with people looking at him like he’s a freak, like they’ve been looking at Kurt and even Rachel all week - even if something deep inside him aches every time he sees one of them walk by or sit with someone who’s not him during glee club.
He almost pulls Kurt aside to talk to him during the week, after all - Rachel’s been off on her own planet for days, and seeing her hovering around Jesse is too much of a deterrent for Finn - just to see if he can’t convince him to tone it down, make himself less of a target (and maybe see if he’s ready to talk, because Finn thinks he might be almost ready to listen). When he tries, though, Kurt gives him a cold look, the looking-down-his-nose effect no doubt assisted by the ridiculous heels - heels - he’s wearing, and coolly informs Finn, “I have nothing to say to you,” before clicking past in a rush of silver fabric and rhinestones. Finn rolls his eyes in frustration and ignores the weird sting in his chest.
Watching Rachel is almost worse. She’s apparently having some mama drama of her own, which the entire club finds out about secondhand, and makes it impossible for Finn to talk to her. He wants to, if only to see how she’s doing, because she has this sad, reserved look at the start of the week that he really doesn’t like, but it goes away without warning after a few days. She sits between Kurt and Jesse during glee all week, oblivious to the suspicious glares Kurt keeps shooting at Jesse and the resentful ones Finn can’t help aiming at all of them, and pays little attention to anyone else, even when Finn does try to casually ask her what’s up.
Finn is still stewing over all of this on Friday and, of course, the stress makes him forget his music in his locker just before glee. He briefly debates going without it and just reading off someone else’s until he gets the hang of it - it never takes him long - but he knows that Jesse has never once forgotten his. And he doesn’t want to look like a slacker in front of Rachel when that asshole is waiting in the wings, hoping that she will officially break up with Finn so that he can swoop in like some insane, show choir-obsessed bat and steal her again. Finn grimaces at the weird mental image and turns around resignedly, jogging back towards his locker. He figures that if he goes fast enough, he’ll still be in time.
He almost doesn’t turn down that one hallway, but then he faintly hears a familiar voice, hoarse like it usually only gets after a few hours of the three of them tumbling around together - or when Kurt’s been crying. Then the shaking words register: “Go ahead. Hit me.” Finn curses and looks down the hall.
Sure enough, there’s a glint of silver behind a wall of red and yellow - Karofsky and Azimio, judging by the build and the letter jackets, with Kurt backed up into a dead end. He catches a glimpse of Kurt’s face, and he’s defiant but scared - scared like he never was during the dumpster tosses or when someone casually shoved him into something. Finn doesn’t know what’s going on, but he hears “I believe I will” and Karofsky cracking his knuckles, and there’s no way that this is going to end well.
Finn doesn’t remember how he gets there, but he must have ran, because his feet hurt like he’d been pounding them hard on the floor and the next thing he knows, he’s saying something. He thinks it’s something like “No one’s hitting anyone,” because it’s the bravest-sounding thing he can think on such short notice, and Karofsky and Azimio are turning to face him. He feels hot and cold all at once, adrenaline pumping through him so hard he almost feels dizzy, though he tries to look as calm and in-control as he can. Azimio and Karofsky aren’t taller than him, especially with him in his KISS boots, but they’re broader and he’s seen Azimio take guys down on the field. There’s no way he’s going to win this fight, he acknowledges, as he distantly hears them sneer and call him a freak. It doesn’t matter, though, because right now, he can deal with the mockery, but there’s no way he’s letting them attack his - whatever, he can think about the confusing labels some other time.
Kurt is looking at him in stunned disbelief, and some selfish, practical part of Finn stores that look away for the future because, seriously, how often is he going to get that kind of awe directed at him? He figures it’ll help while he’s in traction after whatever Azimio and Karofsky do to him.
They both take a step forward, and Finn tries not to wince despite his haze of protective fury because, man, this is going to suck, but then there’s a familiar cocky voice behind him saying, “Yeah, but can you take all of us?” and Finn barely dares to turn around to see what has Azimio and Karofsky looking gobsmacked.
It’s everyone. The entire club is there, dressed like the freaks they all are, with Puck leading the way, predictably enthusiastic about the idea of beating someone up and getting to be a good guy because of it. Although he doesn’t let anything but cool confidence show, Finn feels like he could kiss all of them (except not, because then Rachel and Kurt would probably kill him).
Azimio and Karofsky both sneer, looking put out, and promise they’ll be back in a way Finn’s pretty sure they ripped from a Disney special or “The Terminator,” but then they’re gone. Finn feels his shoulders sag in relief. If he was dizzy from adrenaline before, the sudden drop now that the threat is gone has him almost needing to put out a hand to steady himself against the lockers. He doesn’t because that would negate whatever coolness he just built up, but he does take a shaky breath and shift a bit until he feels stable, even with the platform boots.
Mr. Schue comes walking down the hallway doing a slow-clap (which Finn thought was supposed to be a sarcastic thing, but he guesses that old people might not know that), and in the resultant moment of group solidarity, Finn leans down to Kurt (not by as much as usual, with the heels), and whispers, “You okay?”
Kurt looks at him, still wide-eyed but almost glowing with the same relief as Finn, and nods. “I am. Thank you.” It’s the first time he’s spoken directly to Finn since they fought, and Finn is almost overcome by the desire to kiss him, right there.
Instead, Finn blurts out, “Can you come over after school? I want to talk.” He’s a little pissed at himself for not holding out, but God, he misses both of them, and right now, he really wants to celebrate the fact that he and Kurt didn’t get beaten up. He almost doesn’t breathe while he waits for Kurt’s response, but when it comes, it’s a hesitant nod. Finn resists the urge to fist-pump. “Great!” he says, unable to hold back the wide grin that’s breaking across his face. “I’ll go ask Rachel now. See you there!”
Kurt is still watching him with a look that seems a bit dazed, but Finn is too busy pushing through the group to Rachel to try and decipher it yet. Rachel gives him a sharp look, but she nods and hesitates before lightly kissing him on the cheek, then ducks away from him between Mercedes and Quinn.
The fact that Jesse is glaring at him makes the moment that much sweeter.
--
Somehow, possibly because the universe had to make up for how well the thing worked out earlier, Finn is ten minutes late getting home. By the time he arrives, Kurt’s car is already in the driveway and, when he walks in, his mom smiles brightly at him and informs him that Rachel and Kurt are both upstairs, but it doesn’t sound like they’ve killed each other yet. Finn doesn’t have the heart to tell her that’s because they’ve been hooking up for the last month and get along better now as a result.
He bounds up the stairs, still not totally rid of the nervous energy from before, even though he belted along to classic rock in the car so loud his voice cracked and a neighboring driver honked at him. He stops just before the open door to his room and takes a deep breath. “Hey,” he says as casually as he can, taking the last few steps through the doorway.
Kurt and Rachel are both perched on his bed. Kurt has removed his wig and shoes, and Rachel’s sunglasses are resting on top of his head, for whatever reason. They pull their clasped hands apart as he enters and look at him. Rachel is giving him a cool look, uncharacteristically unreadable.
“Thanks,” Kurt says stiffly, breaking the silence. “For before, I mean. I know it’s the end of the assignment, but I would have hated to have to fix this costume again before putting it away.”
Finn shakes his head and pulls his desk chair over one-handed, slumping into it facing them. “I don’t think they were going after your costume that time, dude.”
Kurt shrugs. “Still.”
Rachel is fidgeting with the hem of her dress, but her eyes are fixed on Finn. He bites his lip under the scrutiny and tugs his wig off for something to do, sighing privately in relief at the cool air on his scalp. When he looks up, she and Kurt are still staring at him, as if waiting for something, so he blurts out, “So, Rachel, how was your week?” He sort of wants to kick himself for being lame as soon as he says it, but although she sighs and crosses her arms, she thankfully isn’t looking pissed at him.
“Oh, nothing too special happened,” she says, trying for an airy tone that is foiled by the blatant strain under it. She isn’t looking right at Finn anymore, but rather staring at a spot above his head. “I discovered who my mother was with assistance from Jesse, as you may have heard, and tried to reconnect with her, only to be rejected because she was looking for the baby she’d lost and not m- not a teenager who’d grown up without her influence. Apparently.” Kurt wrinkles his nose and scoots closer on the bed, reaching over to rest a hand on her shoulder. She sighs and a small amount of the tight tension in her shoulders melts away. “I’m fine. We had a discussion and decided that an amicable separation was best for now.”
Finn winces. “That sucks. You broke up with your mom?”
Kurt shoots him a glare but Rachel just hangs her head, curled hair falling loose around her face, and reaches up a hand to rest it over Kurt’s. “Something like that,” she agrees, not quite keeping the sadness out despite her determinedly upbeat tone. “She isn’t my mom, though. She’s my mother, but I’ve learned that’s not the same thing.” Kurt mumbles something under his breath as he squeezes her shoulder again, and she turns her head enough to glare at him. “Well, maybe if you weren’t insulting my fathers’ crafting ability at the time, I would have been more inclined to listen.”
Kurt rolls his eyes, and Finn recognizes the sign of yet another impending fight between the two of them. He can’t help wondering how they’re still talking to each other after a week on their own. “So,” he says loudly, cutting Kurt off before he can start pushing Rachel’s buttons, “that sounds like an interesting week. Um.” He realizes that he’s not sure what else to say without stepping into a minefield of missing parents talk. He grins nervously and tries to think fast.
“What did you actually want to talk about?” Kurt sighs, cutting into his floundering. Both Kurt and Rachel are looking at him now, intent.
Finn sighs and looks down at his hands before looking back at them. “Honestly? I didn’t plan that far ahead.” He swallows. If he goes on, he’s going to be putting more of himself out there than he wanted, but the past week has been miserable and he knows it’s a chance he has to take, so he admits, “I just wanted to see you guys again. I missed you.”
They’re both suddenly giving him soft looks, and some of the nervousness that’s been gnawing away at Finn’s stomach all afternoon abates. Rachel smiles a little. “I can only speak for myself, officially, but I’ve missed you, too,” she says, sad and guarded. Kurt shrugs and nods. “It’s just that, as much as I miss you when we’re apart, I also hate having to purposefully leave things out when people ask me about our relationship.” She wrinkles her nose briefly and admits, “Granted, the people asking are usually just Santana, who wants to make my life miserable, and Jesse, who I don’t think is completely over me, but the point still stands.” Kurt rolls his eyes and looks annoyed at the mention of Jesse.
Finn sighs and tries to scratch an itch at the end of his nose before he realizes that the last time he did that, he got white face paint everywhere. “Yeah, I know,” he says, shifting uncomfortably. “But you saw how people reacted when we were just wearing costumes for an assignment. There’s no way we’ll get away with it if the whole school knows what’s going on with us.” He doesn’t voice the nagging fear that whatever they have isn’t still going on. Neither of them contradict his use of present tense, though, so Finn does a mental fist-pump in victory.
“We know that,” Kurt says, frowning. He’s taken his hand off Rachel’s shoulder and is smoothing out a wrinkle in his leggings, not looking at Finn. “But, honestly, the harassment is mostly just Karofsky and Azimio. I don’t know if we can avoid them, but even if we couldn’t, they’d get bored eventually.”
Finn shakes his head. “I don’t think they would. They’re still on you for being gay, you know? And they called me bisexual just for being in glee club, there’s no way they’d let something like this go.”
Kurt is starting to frown, but Rachel jumps in, leaning forward slightly and fixing Finn with an intense stare. “Maybe they wouldn’t, but the rest of the club would be behind us. You heard them today, they don’t care if all of us are, well, freaks, or anything else.” She folds her hands in her lap and smiles. “We’d have support, even if they don’t fully understand at first.”
Kurt nods, finally looking up. “She’s right. They might not be comfortable with the idea, initially, but they wouldn’t reject us for it.”
Finn sighs and rolls his head back. The thing is, it has been exhausting to keep everything from their friends. He’s caught himself wishing he could just spill it to Puck or Mr. Schue a few times, but he’s been holding back because the consequences of them finding out could be humiliating. But now he’s remembering the sight of all of them in ridiculous makeup and wigs, standing together in a hallway and laughing because they were able to protect two of their own, and something in him snaps, a quiet loss of resistance. “Okay,” he breathes, hardly believing himself.
Kurt’s eyes look like saucers and Rachel’s jaw has dropped so far Finn could count her molars if he tried. She closes it with a snap and pulls herself together enough to stammer, “You mean-“
Finn shrugs. “We can tell the club. I mean, I don’t think we should let the whole school know just yet, and we’d have to tell everyone not to spill to anyone, especially Jacob or Coach Sylvester, but,” he swallows hard and makes himself finish, “I think I’d be okay with our friends knowing.”
Kurt is as stunned as he was in the hallway earlier, but he looks like he’s glowing. His mouth works soundlessly for a few seconds before he says, sounding dazed, “We’d have to tell our parents, too.”
“Whoa,” Finn says, immediately holding up his hands. “Whoa, maybe not the parents yet. I mean, I don’t think your dad would kill Rachel ‘cause she’s a girl, but he would have my head above the fireplace, man.”
Kurt is outright smiling now, and he waves a hand dismissively. “Let me take care of that. It will be awkward, but I think I can bring him around if I phrase it the right way and promise I won’t try to burn his flannel again for a few months.”
Rachel has been quietly clapping her hands in delight for at least a minute. “Yes, and I seriously doubt my fathers will have a problem with it. They like Kurt, and they’ll be delighted to know that you and I are back together, Finn. They’ve been worrying over this past week, attributing all of my mother-related dramatic silences to sadness over a breakup.” Her eyes shoot wide and she hastily rattles off, “That isn’t to say that I wasn’t deeply sad over the tacit break in our relationship, but it didn’t account for all of the run-throughs of my ‘Songs for Deeply-Felt Heartbreak’ playlist.”
Finn blinks, but turns to Kurt. “Are you sure we have to tell our parents?”
Kurt rolls his eyes. “Our parents are dating, Finn. They’ll find out eventually, and then they’ll tell each other. I barely talked my dad out of having you and your mom move in with us a month ago; they need to know.”
Finn sighs and mentally prepares himself for Friday night dinners to get really, really awkward. He’s not sure if suggesting they invite Rachel will make things better or worse, but maybe her surplus of energy could balance out the inevitable awkward moments.
“I would suggest,” Kurt starts, snapping into planning mode and sounding way too pleased with himself, “that we break the news to our parents tonight. It’s Friday, so we’ll have to do it individually before six, and then we can invite Rachel along for dinner and have a group conversation, if they want.”
Rachel nods firmly. “That sounds feasible. You’ll both have to come to my house afterwards to meet my fathers in a more official capacity than before, though. I expect they’ll have more questions than I’ll be able to answer in the interval between now and six. Where will we be having dinner?”
“It’s usually at Breadstix,” Kurt says and looks like he’s going to continue before Rachel cuts him off.
“That sounds very public for a first meeting as your girlfriend, as well as Finn’s, especially if we don’t want to make Finn too uncomfortable with the possibility of a public spectacle.” She purses her lips in thought. “Do you think it would be possible to order in, or to make a home-cooked meal? I’d be more than happy to help cook; I have extensive experience with heart-healthy vegan meals that are delicious despite their low fat content.”
Kurt considers this for a moment, then his eyes light up. By now, he and Rachel have turned so that they are more or less facing each other on the bed, and Finn has totally given up on having any control over this conversation. As Kurt and Rachel throw worryingly specific menu ideas back and forth, Finn sighs and reflects that at least they’re willing to respect his boundaries for going public.
“Um, guys?” Finn says, after Kurt and Rachel have been arguing about the necessity of a salad course in a vegan meal for at least two minutes, “It’s, like, almost three-thirty.”
They both look at him in surprise. Kurt sighs. “I guess we should get started, then. I’ll need to change before I try to explain to Dad, and Rachel-“
“I’ll come over at five-fifteen,” she offers promptly. “And I’ll bring the tabbouleh.”
Finn has no idea what that is, and isn’t sure he wants to find out.
Kurt and Rachel both stand up from the bed, and there’s a long moment where they all freeze, hesitant and no longer sure of where the boundaries lie. Rachel lifts her head, though, and steps forward so that she can rest a hand on Finn’s cheek and lean in to kiss him softly. “I love you, you know,” she says after she pulls away. There’s a smudge of black lipstick that’s transferred to her own lips, but Finn thinks she’s never looked more beautiful. Kurt’s standing close enough that she can turn around and tug him down to meet her lips as well and, once she’s opened her eyes again, she adds, “both of you.”
Kurt has left a hand resting on her back and makes no move to remove it as he glances between the two of them with a wry smile. “God help me, but I think I do too.” He shakes his head and steps closer so that he can dip down and kiss Finn as well.
Finn sort of feels like his chest is going to burst at any second, so rather than risk saying anything and sticking his foot in his mouth, he stands up and pulls both Kurt and Rachel into a tight hug, feeling Rachel wind her arms around both of them and nestle against his chest, her head lower than usual due to the platforms he never bothered to take off.
Kurt, however, makes an indignant noise and flaps a hand against Finn’s chest. “Finn,” he chides, “spikes!”
Finn grins sheepishly as Rachel laughs and the moment is lightened. He lets go of Kurt long enough for Kurt to unbuckle the costume piece that was apparently digging into his cheek and discard it on the floor, then pulls him back against him more comfortably.
They’ll have to go soon, he knows, and start preparing for what will probably be the most uncomfortable evening of their lives, and Finn will have to figure out how to wash off his face paint and then explain to his mother that he’s dating not only the girl she thinks he broke up with, but also the son of the man she’s dating, but for the moment he doesn’t care how convoluted things are. He’s got both of his whatevers in his arms, and it doesn’t seem like they want to leave any time soon.