Sure Fire Winners (part 2)
Title: Sure Fire Winners (part 2)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Will/Finn
Spoilers: No biggies. Graduation day.
Word Count: ~1,300 in this part. So very many hundreds to come.
PART 1
Will was talking to Rachel and Mercedes about their last number they were gonna perform as New Directions. The show containing four songs and loads of dancing was taking place that very evening, and they’d been practising for it for two weeks. The girls were excited, but the sadness of it being the last performance together could be heard in their voices. Rachel was babbling about her solo and the duet he and Finn were gonna sing, while Mercedes was only worried about the outfits and some accessories they were still missing. Will listened to all of this, nodding and agreeing, dropping in a few random comments.
Suddenly his head jerked up involuntarily. He found himself looking straight into the eyes of Finn Hudson.
The boy - well, now a young man - was standing in the middle of the hallway, dividing the busy stream of people in two. There was an odd look on his face, and his stance looked like he’d just frozen in one place in the middle of walking. Will tried to smile at him, but the scared look on Finn’s face made him take a deep breath, and he felt a pang of worry.
He told the girls they could meet in the choir room in half an hour to double-check the whole thing, and turned back to Finn to wave him over. Instead of seeing him where he just was, Will just saw his pale face disappear around the corner. He didn’t know what was going on, but he followed him without giving it much thought. The look on his face just seconds earlier worried Will to the bone and he wondered why that was.
Sure, he’d always liked Finn a lot. More than any other students he’d had so far. At some point he had felt like a big brother to the fatherless boy, but later because of some random coincidences they’d ended up spending time together just as two guys. Almost like friends. Will didn’t have many of those, just the co-workers and some odd meet-ups with old college friends.
So he justified his worrying with all this as he followed Finn to the men’s room. He thought about knocking, but it felt so stupid he just ended up pushing the door open silently. What he saw then surprised him - the young man was bent over the sink, squeezing its sides with his hands, staring at the bottom of it. Will thought he heard him sob once, and felt bad for being there without him knowing. He quickly opened his mouth to ask if Finn was ok, but he didn’t get much of a response from him. He wanted to step closer, help him up from his awkward crouch and hug him tight like he’d done so long ago in the auditorium. He wanted to tell him that everything was ok, that he was there for him and that there was no reason to worry. He stopped himself half a second before grabbing Finn’s arm to pull him up, and instead touched his back gently. Then he left.
--
Finn waited for two minutes before leaving the men’s room. He hoped Mr. Schue wouldn’t be outside waiting, and yet he wanted nothing more. His head was dizzy with all the shocked thoughts and questions, and his chest felt like it was gonna explode from all the feelings he suddenly had there. Where did these things come from? Finn cursed his sorry state under his breath and walked out. He decided to walk to the choir room, see what was going on. He didn’t want to, he was so afraid of seeing Schue again, but not going would probably seem a bit weird. Then again, maybe he could just tell everyone he had the stomach flu or something..
But before he could make a decision to leave the school or join Puck and the guys in the cafeteria, he was already at the choir room door. And there was no-one there. He walked in and sat down, wondering if he had heard right. But just then Mr. Schue walked in, and Finn jumped up from the chair like he was caught doing something bad.
“Hey”, he said and tried to smile. He failed.
“Finn”, Schue said silently and smiled. He hesitated for a minute and added, “you still don’t look very good but at least you seem to alive”.
“Yeah, I think I’ve got the stomach flu or something”, Finn said avoiding his teacher’s eyes. He pretended to wipe something off his shirt. “So where are the others?”
“Oh I told them we’re gonna meet up in half an hour.. like, 20 minutes from now or something”, Schue told him and started to wipe off writing from the whiteboard. He was humming to himself while doing this, and Finn watched him in silence. Suddenly he saw the man in a totally different light, like someone had pointed a bright spotlight on him out of nowhere. He knew his figure so well after spending endless hours in the choir room watching him sing and dance, talk and teach.
But now.. he couldn’t help but stare. Suddenly he noticed details. Endless amount of details. Like the muscles delicately shifting under his white collared shirt as he moved around, the concentration on his face while he was cleaning up the room and organizing stuff on the sidetable. The way his mouth curved up a little from the corners even when he wasn’t smiling. His hands.. I love his hands, Finn thought, and felt like hitting himself in the head. What the hell was he thinking? He felt the heart squeeze again and buried his face into his hands, half panicking, just wanting to run out of the room. He knew he was blushing hard. He took time to concentrate on breathing, trying to forget where he was and who with.
“Finn,” he heard the teacher say and was startled by how close the voice came from. He didn’t lift his head, so Mr. Schue continued: “You’re clearly not ok. Please talk to me. Is it Rachel?”
“No,” Finn snorted like it was the most ridiculous thing you could ask from him, surprising himself with his reaction, “it’s definitely not Rachel. Or any girl. Seems I’m done with them”, he said bitterly and instantly regretted saying this. He hid his face into his hands again.
“What, girls?” Schue chuckled and rested his hand on Finn’s shoulder. Finn stiffened under his touch and he noticed it. He squeezed his shoulder firmly and took his hand away. Finn felt the heat of the touch even after he removed his hand. Images of him stretching out his own hand to grab Schue’s to pull him closer flashed through is mind and he groaned. What the fuck was happening to him?
“Look, I can’t talk about it, Mr. Schue.”
“Fine, don’t. Or talk when you’re ready. But promise me something, Finn.”
“Yeah?”, he said and managed to peek at Mr. Schue through his fingers.
“That you’ll call me just Will from now on”, he said to his soon-to-be former student and smiled.
“Ok, Just Will”, Finn said and laughed at his own lousy, oldest-in-the-world joke.
--
PART 3