We Build Then We Break - Chapter 1
Title: We Build Then we Break
Chapter: 1/5
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Will/Finn
Summary: Alternate time line. Remember, in the Pilot, when Will decided to leave McKinley to become an accountant because his wife was pregnant? He really did that. Now it's five years later, and he's still an accountant. Finn dropped out of high school to help Quinn raise her baby, and he's a janitor in Will's office building.
Notes: I've had this idea in my head for several months, and I'm thrilled to finally get it out. This story is complete, as in, all of it has been written. I'll be posting it over the next couple of days, probably. Also, I've worked harder on this than on any piece of fan fiction I've ever written, so I really hope you enjoy it.
It was late, and that was sort of the point.
He could have gone home. He should have gone home, and pretended to actually be a husband for once, instead of just some stranger who pays the bills. It was a sad truth that his life had come to this. There was a pathetically optimistic side of him that actually believed a little bit that maybe their marriage could work, and that kept him from getting a divorce. The harsh reality was that he could barely look at his wife. It hadn't always been like this - there had been a time when they'd been in love, when they were going to start a family and live happily ever after like he'd always imagined. But happily ever after rarely turned out that way.
Instead, he had a lot of money saved up (money that he was sure Terri would take if they divorced) because of his good job as an accountant, and few things to spend money on. Fertility treatments cost a lot of money, and he'd paid for quite a few of them, but actually having a kid would have cost a lot more. Still, though, he would have given all his money, all his... everything, for that. For some semblance of a happy life, instead of this... masquerade.
His life offered him few escapes. There were precisely three things in his life that brought him any sort of happiness, and they were as follows:
1. His dreams. It was weird, but he had this sort of alternate-reality version of his life that he often dreamed about, in which he never quit teaching at McKinley and led the Glee Club to victory. It wasn't perfect - it seemed that in any reality, his marriage to Terri would be miserable - but it had hope. Which he lacked now.
2. The roof of the office building. The office building he worked in was 20 stories tall, and if he jumped off the roof, he would die. The idea that there was an escape brought him happiness. The fact that his only real escape was death was pretty terrible, but at least it was something.
3. The singing.
Will worked late as often as he could, often not arriving home until 10 or 11. This meant that the janitors would come to clean the office while he was still working, and he was fine with that. There were very few people in his life who he didn't hate, so the more the merrier. There was one janitor, who cleaned the hallway or something, who sang as he worked. Will never saw him in person, but he heard the voice almost every night. Granted, it was only for about 15 minutes as the janitor cleaned the hallway, but those were the best 15 minutes of his day. That voice... he'd never heard anything like it. It was untrained, but all the more pure because of it. It made him nostalgic for something he couldn't put his finger on, and sometimes he thought he heard it in his dreams. It was beautiful. It was perfect.
And then one day it stopped.
When there are very few things that make you happy, and one is taken away, well... it hurts. It makes it harder to breathe, to do anything at all. For a week, Will waited for the voice to return, but it didn't. And he'd been having trouble sleeping anyway. And Terri was complaining about how much time he spent at work (while still spending his money freely) and his boss was bitching at him, and... enough was enough.
The stars were bright that night, Will thought, as he climbed onto the roof. For the record, he wasn't sure what he was doing quite yet. It wasn't like he said to himself, "It's time to go kill yourself, up to the roof immediately!" It was just that he had nowhere else to go. And so he stood, and looked around, and breathed in the night air, and felt almost at peace for once. He stood at the edge of the roof and looked down, and tentatively stuck a foot out.
"Please don't do this!"
Will was so startled that he almost fell off the roof, but a hand on his arm pulled him back. He stared up at the person, embarrassed and a little scared.
"Sorry... I was cleaning and I saw that the door was left open so I came outside to tell whoever was out here that they could get locked out... and then it kinda looked like you were gonna jump."
Will tilted his head. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
"Maybe? Hey, how about we discuss this inside - it's a little cold out, and um, I'd really rather you didn't run off the roof or something."
"Alright."
Will followed the taller man inside, and watched as he locked the door behind them. "Door shouldn't have been open anyway," the man muttered.
Will looked at him closely. "Are you... Finn Hudson? You were in my Spanish Class at McKinley High School."
Finn nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Yeah. Mr Schuester. I'm surprised you remember me... I was only in your Spanish class for a couple of months, before you left."
Will winced. "Yeah... you can call me Will, though. You were in Glee Club, too. How did that go?"
Finn shrugged. "I'm not really sure. I mean, for a little while, it seemed like we could really go somewhere, but eventually getting harassed by everyone else in the school got to be a little too much, and... I dunno. I think Rachel Berry tried to keep it going, maybe she was successful, I'm not sure."
"I thought you two were in the same class."
"No, she was a year below me. And I dropped out, anyway, when my girlfriend got pregnant."
"Oh. I'm sorry, Finn."
Finn just shrugged. "It's alright. I never expected to leave Lima, not really. But I feel like I should be saying sorry to you... you're the one who was going to jump off a roof."
Will shrugged, carefully keeping his face neutral. "I'm fine, don't worry."
"Do you need to... to talk, or anything? It's just that one of the guys from McKinley killed himself and..."
"Artie Abrams. Right." He sighed. "Look, I appreciate your coming up and all, I do, but--"
In that moment, Will Schuester realized several things:
1. That Finn Hudson had the saddest eyes he'd ever seen.
2. That realizing that someone's eyes were sad was a little weird.
3. That at this moment, there was another human being reaching out to him. He imagined for a moment that he was drowning, and that someone on a life raft offered him a hand. It was his choice, whether to take that hand and be pulled up into the lifeboat... or to let himself drown.
"--do you want to go get a drink?"
"Excuse me?" asked Finn, startled.
"I... talking could be good. As long as both of us talk. Wanna go get a drink with me?"
Finn stared at him for a moment and then nodded. "I just need to finish up..."
"There's a bar across the street. I have to finish my work too... meet you there in half an hour?"
Finn nodded, and the two parted ways.
--
The bar across from the office building was a bit seedy, but it served an important purpose in Lima. Its location was no coincidence either. People in Lima were miserable. It was an unspoken fact that no one really wanted to live in Lima - it was the kind of place where you got trapped, and then all of a sudden you were almost forty and your life was going nowhere and you couldn't find the way out.
Will looked up and raised a hand in greeting as Finn walked into the bar. Finn nodded upon seeing him and walked over to the small table.
"So, um, were you going to kill yourself? Because you shouldn't do that. It sucks."
Will gave a half smile at Finn's bluntness. "Honestly, I'm not sure. I just kind of liked that the option was there."
"I'm not sure what you mean by that..."
The bartender set down two mugs of beer in front of them, to which Finn raised his eyebrows and murmured, "Thanks." Will waved him off and took a long drink.
"I guess it's just that I feel trapped. And the roof represented an escape from everything."
Finn nodded. "Yeah, I get that. Except I don't even have that option, because I have a kid. And don't get me wrong, I love her, she's great, but..."
"But you never imagined your life going like this?"
"Yeah."
Will raised his glass in a silent toast and then finished the rest of it in one long swig.
Finn perked up, suddenly, glancing upwards. "I know this song," he said, smiling, and then singing along. "...And even as I wander, I'm keeping you in sight... you're a candle in the window..."
Will gaped at him, which Finn quickly noticed, and stopped singing. "Sorry, sorry, I just..."
"You. I've heard you sing before."
Finn shrugged. "You were in charge of Glee Club for a few weeks, so, yeah..."
"No! I mean... I heard you. In the office building, while you were cleaning. That was you."
Finn blushed. "I didn't know anyone was around to hear that," he muttered. "Wish someone had told me, so I wouldn't have made an ass of myself..."
Will shook his head vigorously. "No! You were really good! I mean... really, really good!"
Finn looked at him like he'd grown a second head. "Well, thanks..."
A realization suddenly came crashing down on Will. "Finn, I... I failed you."
Finn now looked even more confused. "Excuse me?"
"You... have so much talent. That's why I got you to join Glee Club in the first place. And then I left, and you never got the chance to use that talent, to shine..."
"...To be honest, I don't really think that's your fault."
"Maybe not... I guess I've just gotten to the point in my life when I just look at everything and wonder how it got to be like this. If there was ever a time when things could have happened differently... I'm sorry, I don't mean to unload on you like this."
"No, it's fine... I mean, I asked. I just wish there was something I could do to help."
Will smiled. "Keep singing. It's the one thing in the day that actually makes me happy."
"Really? That's... that's really nice of you." He laughed a little and shrugged.
"You should have joined a band or something."
"Yeah, me and my friend Puck were going to - Noah Puckerman, I mean, I dunno if you remember him - he plays guitar and I play drums - but it never worked out."
"You play drums? I play guitar, actually."
"We should jam sometime."
"Yeah."
Will sighed as he felt his phone vibrate inside his pocket. "Hello?... Hi, Terri... Yeah, I went out for some drinks after work... I never said that you couldn't... Yeah, I'll be home soon. Bye." He slipped his phone back into his pocket and tried to hide his disappointment. "That was my wife... I have to go."
Finn nodded. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a crumpled receipt. Smoothing it out, he wrote his phone number on it and then slid it across the table to Will. "If you ever want to jam, or hang out, or... talk... call me."
Will took one of his business cards out of his wallet and handed it to Finn. "Same here. It was really great seeing you, Finn."
"Yeah, you too." The two stood and walked out of the bar together. They looked at each other for a moment, and Finn rested his hand on Will's shoulder. "I think about Artie a lot... how alone and hopeless he must have felt. I feel that way a lot too... the only thing that keeps me..." He paused, unable to think of the right word. "If it wasn't for my daughter, I don't know what I'd do. But I... I hope you don't feel as hopeless and alone as he must have felt. And I'm here for you, if you need me."
Will nodded. "That means a lot to me, Finn. Thank you."
It was starting to snow, but Will couldn't even feel the cold.
Chapter Two coming soon, whenever I feel like it.
All chapters of this story, once posted, will be be found HERE
The rest of my fic can be found HERE
Chapter: 1/5
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Will/Finn
Summary: Alternate time line. Remember, in the Pilot, when Will decided to leave McKinley to become an accountant because his wife was pregnant? He really did that. Now it's five years later, and he's still an accountant. Finn dropped out of high school to help Quinn raise her baby, and he's a janitor in Will's office building.
Notes: I've had this idea in my head for several months, and I'm thrilled to finally get it out. This story is complete, as in, all of it has been written. I'll be posting it over the next couple of days, probably. Also, I've worked harder on this than on any piece of fan fiction I've ever written, so I really hope you enjoy it.
It was late, and that was sort of the point.
He could have gone home. He should have gone home, and pretended to actually be a husband for once, instead of just some stranger who pays the bills. It was a sad truth that his life had come to this. There was a pathetically optimistic side of him that actually believed a little bit that maybe their marriage could work, and that kept him from getting a divorce. The harsh reality was that he could barely look at his wife. It hadn't always been like this - there had been a time when they'd been in love, when they were going to start a family and live happily ever after like he'd always imagined. But happily ever after rarely turned out that way.
Instead, he had a lot of money saved up (money that he was sure Terri would take if they divorced) because of his good job as an accountant, and few things to spend money on. Fertility treatments cost a lot of money, and he'd paid for quite a few of them, but actually having a kid would have cost a lot more. Still, though, he would have given all his money, all his... everything, for that. For some semblance of a happy life, instead of this... masquerade.
His life offered him few escapes. There were precisely three things in his life that brought him any sort of happiness, and they were as follows:
1. His dreams. It was weird, but he had this sort of alternate-reality version of his life that he often dreamed about, in which he never quit teaching at McKinley and led the Glee Club to victory. It wasn't perfect - it seemed that in any reality, his marriage to Terri would be miserable - but it had hope. Which he lacked now.
2. The roof of the office building. The office building he worked in was 20 stories tall, and if he jumped off the roof, he would die. The idea that there was an escape brought him happiness. The fact that his only real escape was death was pretty terrible, but at least it was something.
3. The singing.
Will worked late as often as he could, often not arriving home until 10 or 11. This meant that the janitors would come to clean the office while he was still working, and he was fine with that. There were very few people in his life who he didn't hate, so the more the merrier. There was one janitor, who cleaned the hallway or something, who sang as he worked. Will never saw him in person, but he heard the voice almost every night. Granted, it was only for about 15 minutes as the janitor cleaned the hallway, but those were the best 15 minutes of his day. That voice... he'd never heard anything like it. It was untrained, but all the more pure because of it. It made him nostalgic for something he couldn't put his finger on, and sometimes he thought he heard it in his dreams. It was beautiful. It was perfect.
And then one day it stopped.
When there are very few things that make you happy, and one is taken away, well... it hurts. It makes it harder to breathe, to do anything at all. For a week, Will waited for the voice to return, but it didn't. And he'd been having trouble sleeping anyway. And Terri was complaining about how much time he spent at work (while still spending his money freely) and his boss was bitching at him, and... enough was enough.
The stars were bright that night, Will thought, as he climbed onto the roof. For the record, he wasn't sure what he was doing quite yet. It wasn't like he said to himself, "It's time to go kill yourself, up to the roof immediately!" It was just that he had nowhere else to go. And so he stood, and looked around, and breathed in the night air, and felt almost at peace for once. He stood at the edge of the roof and looked down, and tentatively stuck a foot out.
"Please don't do this!"
Will was so startled that he almost fell off the roof, but a hand on his arm pulled him back. He stared up at the person, embarrassed and a little scared.
"Sorry... I was cleaning and I saw that the door was left open so I came outside to tell whoever was out here that they could get locked out... and then it kinda looked like you were gonna jump."
Will tilted his head. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
"Maybe? Hey, how about we discuss this inside - it's a little cold out, and um, I'd really rather you didn't run off the roof or something."
"Alright."
Will followed the taller man inside, and watched as he locked the door behind them. "Door shouldn't have been open anyway," the man muttered.
Will looked at him closely. "Are you... Finn Hudson? You were in my Spanish Class at McKinley High School."
Finn nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Yeah. Mr Schuester. I'm surprised you remember me... I was only in your Spanish class for a couple of months, before you left."
Will winced. "Yeah... you can call me Will, though. You were in Glee Club, too. How did that go?"
Finn shrugged. "I'm not really sure. I mean, for a little while, it seemed like we could really go somewhere, but eventually getting harassed by everyone else in the school got to be a little too much, and... I dunno. I think Rachel Berry tried to keep it going, maybe she was successful, I'm not sure."
"I thought you two were in the same class."
"No, she was a year below me. And I dropped out, anyway, when my girlfriend got pregnant."
"Oh. I'm sorry, Finn."
Finn just shrugged. "It's alright. I never expected to leave Lima, not really. But I feel like I should be saying sorry to you... you're the one who was going to jump off a roof."
Will shrugged, carefully keeping his face neutral. "I'm fine, don't worry."
"Do you need to... to talk, or anything? It's just that one of the guys from McKinley killed himself and..."
"Artie Abrams. Right." He sighed. "Look, I appreciate your coming up and all, I do, but--"
In that moment, Will Schuester realized several things:
1. That Finn Hudson had the saddest eyes he'd ever seen.
2. That realizing that someone's eyes were sad was a little weird.
3. That at this moment, there was another human being reaching out to him. He imagined for a moment that he was drowning, and that someone on a life raft offered him a hand. It was his choice, whether to take that hand and be pulled up into the lifeboat... or to let himself drown.
"--do you want to go get a drink?"
"Excuse me?" asked Finn, startled.
"I... talking could be good. As long as both of us talk. Wanna go get a drink with me?"
Finn stared at him for a moment and then nodded. "I just need to finish up..."
"There's a bar across the street. I have to finish my work too... meet you there in half an hour?"
Finn nodded, and the two parted ways.
--
The bar across from the office building was a bit seedy, but it served an important purpose in Lima. Its location was no coincidence either. People in Lima were miserable. It was an unspoken fact that no one really wanted to live in Lima - it was the kind of place where you got trapped, and then all of a sudden you were almost forty and your life was going nowhere and you couldn't find the way out.
Will looked up and raised a hand in greeting as Finn walked into the bar. Finn nodded upon seeing him and walked over to the small table.
"So, um, were you going to kill yourself? Because you shouldn't do that. It sucks."
Will gave a half smile at Finn's bluntness. "Honestly, I'm not sure. I just kind of liked that the option was there."
"I'm not sure what you mean by that..."
The bartender set down two mugs of beer in front of them, to which Finn raised his eyebrows and murmured, "Thanks." Will waved him off and took a long drink.
"I guess it's just that I feel trapped. And the roof represented an escape from everything."
Finn nodded. "Yeah, I get that. Except I don't even have that option, because I have a kid. And don't get me wrong, I love her, she's great, but..."
"But you never imagined your life going like this?"
"Yeah."
Will raised his glass in a silent toast and then finished the rest of it in one long swig.
Finn perked up, suddenly, glancing upwards. "I know this song," he said, smiling, and then singing along. "...And even as I wander, I'm keeping you in sight... you're a candle in the window..."
Will gaped at him, which Finn quickly noticed, and stopped singing. "Sorry, sorry, I just..."
"You. I've heard you sing before."
Finn shrugged. "You were in charge of Glee Club for a few weeks, so, yeah..."
"No! I mean... I heard you. In the office building, while you were cleaning. That was you."
Finn blushed. "I didn't know anyone was around to hear that," he muttered. "Wish someone had told me, so I wouldn't have made an ass of myself..."
Will shook his head vigorously. "No! You were really good! I mean... really, really good!"
Finn looked at him like he'd grown a second head. "Well, thanks..."
A realization suddenly came crashing down on Will. "Finn, I... I failed you."
Finn now looked even more confused. "Excuse me?"
"You... have so much talent. That's why I got you to join Glee Club in the first place. And then I left, and you never got the chance to use that talent, to shine..."
"...To be honest, I don't really think that's your fault."
"Maybe not... I guess I've just gotten to the point in my life when I just look at everything and wonder how it got to be like this. If there was ever a time when things could have happened differently... I'm sorry, I don't mean to unload on you like this."
"No, it's fine... I mean, I asked. I just wish there was something I could do to help."
Will smiled. "Keep singing. It's the one thing in the day that actually makes me happy."
"Really? That's... that's really nice of you." He laughed a little and shrugged.
"You should have joined a band or something."
"Yeah, me and my friend Puck were going to - Noah Puckerman, I mean, I dunno if you remember him - he plays guitar and I play drums - but it never worked out."
"You play drums? I play guitar, actually."
"We should jam sometime."
"Yeah."
Will sighed as he felt his phone vibrate inside his pocket. "Hello?... Hi, Terri... Yeah, I went out for some drinks after work... I never said that you couldn't... Yeah, I'll be home soon. Bye." He slipped his phone back into his pocket and tried to hide his disappointment. "That was my wife... I have to go."
Finn nodded. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a crumpled receipt. Smoothing it out, he wrote his phone number on it and then slid it across the table to Will. "If you ever want to jam, or hang out, or... talk... call me."
Will took one of his business cards out of his wallet and handed it to Finn. "Same here. It was really great seeing you, Finn."
"Yeah, you too." The two stood and walked out of the bar together. They looked at each other for a moment, and Finn rested his hand on Will's shoulder. "I think about Artie a lot... how alone and hopeless he must have felt. I feel that way a lot too... the only thing that keeps me..." He paused, unable to think of the right word. "If it wasn't for my daughter, I don't know what I'd do. But I... I hope you don't feel as hopeless and alone as he must have felt. And I'm here for you, if you need me."
Will nodded. "That means a lot to me, Finn. Thank you."
It was starting to snow, but Will couldn't even feel the cold.
Chapter Two coming soon, whenever I feel like it.
All chapters of this story, once posted, will be be found HERE
The rest of my fic can be found HERE