Fic. An Adoption Story
Title: An Adoption Story (Wow, just like that tv show)
Author: alicebluegown16
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Congrats. It's a girl.
Pairing/Characters: Will/Finn, OFC, mentions of past Quinn/Finn
AN: Awhile ago I wrote the story Name Game, which was all about Finn/Will adopting a baby. And now I'm filling in how they got there. However, the direction this story went in was kind of unexpected. If anyone cares, in the role of Cassie, I picture the actress Oleysa Rulin.
Warnings: Second Person POV from an original character. Two things that I know people aren't exactly crazy about. ANGST.
Dave is telling you about a potential adoptive couple, a teacher and a social worker and they sound perfect, so you’re waiting for him to explain the ‘yes, but’ in his voice.
A deep steadying breath.
“Cassie…Finn and Will, they’re a gay couple.”
Oh.
Huh.
Apparently, ‘Yes, but’ equals butt sex. You have to bite the inside of your cheek to keep from giggling. Meanwhile, Dave’s looking at you like he expects you to start throwing Bibles at any moment.
You shrug.
“And?”
“And…and I’m not saying it’ll be a factor in whether you want to consider them, or if there’s anything right or wrong with it being a factor because this is your decision and it’s not my place, but if it is a factor, you can let me know and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Dave, unless this is actually the Christ child I’m carrying, I probably don’t have much room to judge.”
You like Dave, he’s been pretty decent and only rarely bullshits you, but he’s a little uptight. You’re sometimes tempted to tell him he needs to get laid, but you don’t think it’d be appropriate given your current circumstances.
**
They look like they really, really want to be holding hands right now, but worry it’ll freak you out and that, more than anything, is what decides it for you. With one hugely glaring exception, ‘Please, baby. C’mon, you’re so special, you know I love you’ you’ve always considered yourself a pretty good judge of character.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” The younger one, Mr. Hudson---Finn, repeats.
“Okay, you two are gonna be my baby daddies. If you want to, that is.”
At this, they then proceed to have an entire conversation with just their eyes. You didn’t think couples actually did that.
“Cassie, how--how old are you?” Will asks.
“Sixteen.”
Another eye conversation.
“What about your family?”
“It’s just me and my mom. And she’s-no, I’m not going to say she’s cool with this, but she says what I decide is up to me. You know, one of those ‘I made my bed and now I have to lie in it’ sort of things…Even though I think that’s kind of what got me in this situation in the first place.”
Neither one laughs.
“Sorry. That wasn’t-sometimes I say…stuff.”
“And the father?” This is from Finn.
Is a lying sack of shit who’s been telling anyone who will listen that the kid isn’t his.
“Isn’t in the picture and doesn’t want to be.”
They both make sympathetic you poor thing noises and Will whispers ‘oh, sweetheart’ and then bites his lip like he’s worried how you’ll react to that.
How you react is to tear up like a total hormonal idiot and you have to remind yourself that it doesn’t mean anything, that of course they’re gonna be sympathetic. You’re offering to give them a baby; they’re not going to fuck this up by calling you a skanky hobag or something.
“Look, I…I’m not ready to do this-be a mom and all that, but Dave says you’re on the up and up and that you’re good people. All I want is someone who will love this kid, give him or her the stuff I can’t. And I figure if you two are willing to have your lives shoved under the microscope, you must really want this, right? So, why the hell not?”
They tell you okay, and you breathe a sigh of relief. Like this the interview portion for the Miss. America pageant and you just pulled a really great answer about world peace out of your ass.
And you were right because they’re holding hands now.
**
“Honey, you promised we were going to stay in tonight and watch movies.”
You roll your eyes because in actuality, you did no such thing. In fact your exact words this morning were ‘Can’t. Going to the library tonight.’
But it’s no shock that your mom is insisting on remembering things differently. She has these moments when she’ll suddenly get it into her head that if the two of you don’t bake cookies or paint each others nails and gossip like total BFFs, she must have completely failed you and you’re going to end up a serial killer. Usually you go along with it and humor her until it passes, but you’re not in the mood right now.
“Another night, all right?”
You’re ready to head out the door, sure that’s the end of the matter, but she crosses her arms.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean, maybe this is the reason you’re in the condition you’re in right now. Me giving you too much free reign, letting you go off at all hours.”
“It’s the library, Mom!” Your voice goes slightly shrill at the end because you can’t fucking believe she’s choosing now to suddenly decide you need more adult supervision. “Not a street corner.”
“Don’t use that tone with me, Cassandra Marie Ford. I have had it up to here with your smart mouth, young lady.”
You snort.
“Oh, come on. I’m already knocked up, Mom. The horse is so far out of the barn that the barn is like a tiny speck on the horizon.”
She slaps you hard enough to snap your head back and your (smart) mouth fills up with blood from where you bit your tongue.
Finn’s the one who answers the door. Red mark on your face, duffle bag over your shoulder, and you try to smile like you’re not terrified of the answer when you ask if you can come in.
**
By the time you’re sitting at the kitchen table and Will’s handing you a drink of water, you already think this might be the worst idea in the history of ever. They clearly have the complete wrong fucking idea about this and you’re so mortified that you’ve aired your dirty laundry to them. You keep rotating the glass, tracing absent minded patterns in the condensation, not wanting to look up and see them pitying you.
“Look, she’s not-she’s not a bad person, okay? She’s just-“ Disappointed. Angry. Embarrassed you fucked up. You remember how she used to brag to her girlfriends about you, how smart you were, how good you were, never any trouble, how you practically raised yourself.
“She’s just stressed.”
“She ever been stressed like this before?” Finn’s voice is very quiet, like he already maybe suspects the answer and you gnaw at a hangnail on your thumb.
Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie.
“A few times.” You mumble.
Will cursing under his breath, Finn standing up so fast his chair flips over and you sink back into yours because you just suddenly realized ‘Holy shit, he’s huge’ and what the fuck were you thinking coming here, you don’t fucking know these people, what they’re gonna do.
But then Will’s got his arms wrapped around Finn, one hand at the nape of his neck, another on his chest, not holding him back or anything, just sort of…reminding him that he’s there? His voice pitched low and soothing like you’ve read about people doing with spooked horses.
“Finn, Finn, don’t, don’t. Cassie’s here, Finn. Cassie’s here and you’re scaring her and that’s not what she needs right now.”
He calms down pretty quickly after that. Will calms him down, Will calms him down with his voice and his hands and it kind of freaks you out and you almost want to apologize for seeing it, like you accidentally stumbled on them naked or something.
And then Finn apologizes to you.
You tell him it’s cool, that it’s fine.
“I mean, you’re a social worker. It’s your job to care, right?”
“That’s not w-" Will’s hand on Finn’s arm and they do the eye talking thing again. “So, um, the guest bedroom. That’ll work for you, won’t it?”
**
A week later and the guest bedroom’s still working for you, except for the fact you don’t have any of your stuff, so here you are. Will’s helping you pack, neatly folding up your clothes as Finn stands in the background giving your Mom the ‘Don’t fuck with me’ eye while his thumb hovers over where he has the Department of Children and Family Services on speed dial.
But your mom doesn’t say anything, no objections as you quietly box up your favorite books. You’re torn between being relieved and wanting to grab her shoulders and shake her, scream at her ‘So, that’s it then? You’re just going to let me go that easily?’
On the way out, she stops you in the hall, but instead of a goodbye she asks you to tell her the truth. Is one of them the father?
“Mom, they both are.”
She steps away from you with a look of disgust.
“You mean you don’t know for sure?”
Unpacking, trying to make the guest room look less guest-like and also yeah, hiding out and Finn knocks on the door.
“Don’t have to do that. It’s your house.”
“But it’s your room.”
Well, fuck. After that, you kind of have to let him in, don’t you?
“When I was in high school, my girlfriend got pregnant.”
At this confession, you feel sick to your stomach (Big deal, right? You almost always seem to feel that way nowadays, but this time it’s different, because Finn’s such a sweet guy and you’d thought, you’d been so sure, and shit, it’s like Andrew all over again.)
“You-you-“
“No, no...It-the baby wasn’t mine.” There’s something in his voice that tells you there’s way more to that than he’s willing to go into right now.
“Anyway…anyway…Quinn, that was her name, Quinn she had a real rough time of it, you know? She was head cheerleader and president of the Celibacy Club-don’t laugh at that, this was back in the dark ages of abstinence only education-and everyone just sort of piled on her. Her parents even kicked her out. And she was…she was so strong through the whole thing, even though she was only sixteen and totally scared shitless. And eventually, she decided to give the baby up for adoption, which was a big decision to make, and it was hard for her…and for P-the dad, but she knew it was the right one.”
You want to thank him for sharing this, but way, way more than that, you really want to send him away. It’s too close to your own situation, and you of course know that’s exactly why he’s telling you about it, ‘It’s alright, you’re not a total fuck up, other girls have been where you are.’
An icy trickle of doom down your spine as you suddenly wonder if that’s what this is for him, history repeating itself and you’re just Finn’s chance to do this right, for him to finally have the kid he never got all those years ago.
And now you’re seriously worried you’re going to throw up all over his shoes or something.
You choke back the bile and take a deep breath, because you have to ask, you need to know.
“Quinn did-did she end up alright?”
Did she regret it? Did she get past it? Is she living her life now? Is she happy? Does the kid hate her? Does she hate herself?
“Yeah. She lives in Philadelphia. Co-owns a dance school with another friend of ours named Mercedes. She just got engaged. I haven’t met the guy yet, but Mercedes hasn’t killed him, so he must be good enough.”
You take all that in, the possibility of family, friends, career, love, and hold it close to your heart.
“Thank you. For you know…letting me crash here.”
A pat on the arm that you sort of have the feeling he wants to be a hug.
“No trouble.”
**
Despite the repeated insistence that it’s no trouble, you feel guilty as hell for shoving your way into their lives. After all, they asked for a baby, not the incubator that comes with it.
So, you’re on your absolute bestest good as gold behavior, pleases and thank you, making your bed every morning with hospital corners, insisting on doing all your own laundry and helping with the dishes, and even politely excusing yourself from the table when you bolt up to make it to the bathroom in time (morning sickness, ha! They need to call it all damned day sickness.)
One night Finn’s telling about his ‘brother’ Max, and by now you’ve heard how he always talks about ‘his kids’, and you bite back your immediate instinctive response which is something along the lines of ‘So, I’m just like another stray for you?’ but oh, what you end up saying instead is probably even worse, because you end up blurting out “Wow, hero complex, much?”
Holy fuck, what the fuck were you thinking, they’re letting you live in their house. You want to yank it back in the second it’s out, but Will and Finn just shrug it off and Finn says something about yeah, maybe and how he’s actually thinking about getting a cape and tights.
Crisis averted, you’re so close, and then there it is, the words coming out “Hey, what you two do in the privacy of your own bedroom is none of my business.”
And those words? They’re coming from your big, fat, should totally fucking know better, smartass mouth.
You clap your hand over it (too late.)
Will’s covering his mouth too, and his shoulders are shaking. You realize it’s because he’s laughing. Laughing so hard he’s crying and Finn…Finn just shot iced tea out of his nose which really has to fucking hurt, but he’s cracking up as well and you laugh too, throw your head back and howl and giggle and snort, which sets off a new round for the both of them, and something in your chest unwinds, and goddamn it feels so fucking good and it’s such a relief because you really hate making your bed.
After that, you let yourself be grumpy in the morning and you’re not embarrassed whenever one of them ends up holding your hair back while you puke, and you start taking sides when they debate on where to order take-out from and requesting movies for the Netflix list, and you all joke and tease and hug (and it turns out Finn is like, the hug-master), and one morning you kiss them both on the cheek as you head out the door to school and no one says anything about it being strange, so you do it every day after that.
You come home one Saturday afternoon from a book fair, some stuff for you and a few of your old favorite children’s books that you bought on a whim, which feels a little weird and sort of not your place, but you justify it with the reasoning that they cost less than a dollar each and every kid needs their own copy of Where the Wild Things Are.
A few seconds after the sound of the door slamming behind you, there’s a loud thump noise and muffled cursing, Finn and Will stumbling into the living room, looking red faced and out of breath, not meeting your eyes.
When you figure out why, you start giggling uncontrollably.
“Finn-your sh-your shirt’s on--inside out.” Backwards too, and you’re actually bent in half you’re laughing so hard.
They both look like they want to sink into the floor and it suddenly hits you, that despite how easily affectionate they are with you now, except for that first day, you can only count on one hand the number of times you’ve seen the two of them really touch each other since you moved in.
You can’t believe you never gave any thought to the possibility that they were waiting for you to give them the go ahead, that they might have been trying to be on their bestest good as gold behavior, too.
“Guys, it’s cool. You’re allowed to be touchy-feely. It’s pretty obvious I know where babies come from.”
Will shakes his head at you.
“I am trying and failing to see how that applies to us.”
You punch him in the arm and throw up your hands because you’re not sure how to say it’s fine for them to kiss in front of you without sounding like a perv.
“You know what I mean!”
They clearly get the gist of it though because within a week, you’ve already run out of fingers and toes to count the number of times you’ve seen them get all gooey over each other.
**
It’s late.
Almost three a.m. and Will comes in to check on you because your light is still on.
“You alright, Cas?”
“Yes…no. I’m trying to write her a letter.”
Her. You just found out today and now it’s like this is real, it’s not an it, it’s a she and you want to say something to her.
(And oh, the ultrasound tech’s face as she tried not to look as if she wasn’t dying of curiosity, wondering at the exact nature of the relationship between the three of you, it made you want to laugh so much, but you’d held it in because you’d been full to bursting with water and worried you’d pee on yourself. Then when you’d all gotten in the car, the three of you sat in the parking lot and laughed for almost fifteen minutes, building a whole fake back-story about Finn being the baby daddy and Will being your daddy and how he’s got a shotgun at home and he’s ready and willing to make sure Finn does right by you.)
“I’m trying to do that thing you always see in movies where I write her something for all those important times in her life…but what can I say about graduating high school or getting married when I’ve never done it? And I might not-I might not ever…”
“Cassie, sweetheart.” Will sits on the bed next to you and puts his arms around you. “You haven’t done any of those things, yet. Whatever you come up with to write her, whatever comes to mind, that’s enough, because the words are from you.”
“What kind of advice can I give her? I read all these books and I think I’m so smart, I think I know, but I don’t. How could I have been so stupid to throw my life away on some…some boy just because he told me I was pretty?”
You start to cry. Not delicate tears welling up in your eyes and rolling gently down your cheeks, but ugly choking sobs, desperate and frightened and angry at yourself for being desperate and frightened. Because you always thought you had a good head on your shoulders, that you knew yourself, and look where that belief got you. You gave it all up, compromised yourself for a crooked smile and a warm hand on your thigh and now you’ve lost something, some part of yourself forever.
Will’s brushing your hair back and kissing the top of your head, telling you it’s okay, that it’ll be alright, sweetie, we’re here and we love you, Cassie, honey, don’t beat yourself up, and he holds you until you cry yourself out and fall asleep.
The next morning you feel like your sinuses are packed with cotton and you’re vaguely embarrassed for losing your shit like that, but Will makes French toast and doesn’t say anything about it and later that night, you start writing.
It’s just random crap scribbled down in a spiral notebook about feeling her kick, and how it turns out fried peanut butter and bacon sandwiches are actually kind of awesome but they give you heartburn, and Kurt being pissed off that Finn ends up choosing the perfect color for the nursery by doing eeny-meenie-minie-mo. Funny stories Finn tells about people he sees on the El, and odd dreams you have, and Will insisting that yes, he totally can teach you how to waltz despite you swearing you have two left feet and that your belly threw off your center of gravity, and besides who waltzes anymore these days anyway, and how he’d been right and you’d actually had fun and only stepped on his toes like, maybe a dozen times, tops.
And also, sprinkled in there among all of it, you throw in some stuff that might actually be considered advice. Stuff like, that when given a choice between the book or the movie version, always choose the book. That cynicism isn’t the same thing as maturity. That she should never ever give in to the instinct to think it’s stupid or lame when her dads act mushy because someday it’s going to mean a lot.
A week after you’ve filled up the third notebook, you go into labor. Which really is perfect timing since you haven’t bought a new one yet.
**
She’s beautiful.
She’s beautiful and you let your hand stroke her cheek, too scared to hold her because you worry you’ll drop her.
“Have you picked out a name?”
“Melody. Melody Caroline. If that’s alright with you?”
“Melody. Because music brought you two together, right?”
Finn looks slightly chagrined at how sappy this is, but by now you know it’s sappy enough to be perfect for them.
“Good thing you weren’t a math teacher, Will. Or else he might have named her Protractor.”
And now the moment you’ve been dreading.
“So, we’ll be taking you home in couple of days…”
“No.” You start twisting your fingers up in the blanket. “I’m not going home with you guys. I--um…Dave found me a place to stay, a friend of his, and she seems really cool…and um, my mom…I talked to her, and she wants to do the family counseling thing, and I kind of want to see how that works out.”
“Cas-what-I thought you’d be staying with us?” Finn’s face when you tell him you think this is for the best makes you feel like you just kicked a puppy. But it’s Will, tears in his eyes, voice cracking when he asks if you want them to pack up your stuff for you that almost breaks you.
A split second and it’s there at the tip of your tongue, ‘I’m sorry. I was just being crazy and hormonal. Forget I ever even said it, I change my mind.’ And then you remind yourself there’s a reason you’re doing this, so instead you just nod.
“Yes. I’ll come by for it. Except for the notebooks. Those are for her.”
“Cassie, we don’t want you to get hurt.”
You cry at this because you know Finn means your mom, but you don’t know how to put it into words. That despite how much you love them, you need this right now, to step back, to sort yourself out.
You’re pretty sure if don’t, if you go home with them, it’ll just be a different kind of hurting. That everything you feel will always be tangled up with the doubts in the back of your mind that they’re only asking you to stay because it’s a two for one deal and they have to since you gave them Melody. Because you came to them when you were scared and desperate and they’re too nice to tell you ‘no’ now.
**
A month later and for the first time, you wake up and your hand doesn’t instinctively move to your stomach. When you realize this, you cry.
And then once you’ve stopped, you write Melody a four page letter all about how you loved her, you really did, and how you hope she can understand someday or at the very least not hate you, that even if you can’t be there, you always wanted nothing but the best for her and how you know with Will and Finn you’ll never have to doubt that she’s getting that. At the end, you hesitate and eventually sign it ‘Love, Cassie.’
You don’t put a return address, just your name at the top of the envelope. Which is stupid you know, all Finn has to do is ask around and he’d find you, but they must know what you’re saying ‘I’m okay, I’m fine, just give me space, I need time.’ because they let you be.
It becomes a thing. Every couple of weeks, a letter or a postcard. For her first birthday, you mail her your own dog-eared copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends. When you graduate high school, you send the program.
You end up at Wellesley. Middle of damn nowhere Massachusetts and you've never even been out of the Chicago area. But it’s a good college to be sure and while you’re fairly certain you’re not going to be falling into bed with any guys any time soon, you figure attending an all girls school should help.
You love it. The campus is beautiful and you love all the weird traditions, how peaceful it is. You love your classes; you love your new friends who dork out over the same books as you. And okay, there’s a few times when your roommate will be bitching about how her parents cut off her credit cards and now she’s going to like, have to possibly apply for a work study program or something and you think ‘Fuck you. Try getting knocked up at sixteen.’, but mostly you’re happy. And whattya know. You’re clearly growing as a person because you never actually say it out loud.
You keep writing Melody about whatever random stuff goes through your head (one day you send her an autumn leaf because yeah, the clichés are true, Fall in New England is really like no place else.) and you keep leaving the return address blank. You’re not sure why you’re doing it. Are you expecting them to hold on to the letters for her? To give them to her when she’s older if she ever asks about you? And will what you’ve written be enough to answer those questions?
Sometimes late at night you’ll lay awake and tell yourself that it’s a waste of time. That if the stuff is even getting to her, Will and Finn likely hate you now, that they’re probably throwing it all away unopened because it’d just confuse her, having you hanging around the edge of her life, and besides, they already got what they wanted from you.
But you keep it up because by the morning you’ll have convinced yourself that you’re a good judge of character, that no, you don’t really think they’d do that. Not them.
And then you’re nineteen years old (Melody’s almost three, you wonder if for the rest of your life you’re going to measure your age by how old she is) and you write some stupid little short story and one of your professor’s has a friend of a friend that he insists is going to love it and the next thing you know, it’s published in a literary magazine. Not the campus one, but an actual honest to god magazine people pay money for.
It hits you as you stare at your name in print, a bolt from the blue, that this is what you want to do with your life. And then immediately after that, the realization that you’re going to have a life and it’s going to be a good one and you’re going to meet people and do things and maybe possibly even someday fall in love and that you deserve all of that.
And oh, you want them to know. You want Finn and Will to share this with you; you want them to put your story up on the fridge next to Melody’s macaroni art.
Your hands are shaking when you drop the envelope into the mailbox because on the post-it note you used to mark your story is a phone number and in the upper left hand corner is a return address.