The Secret Life of Finn Hudson

DISCLAIMER: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR EPISODE TWO.

Serenade

Even though Puck calls him John “Ballsack”, Finn likes most of the John Cusack oeuvre. Maybe not Must Love Dogs. Or The Ice Harvest. And he never saw Grace is Gone because that looked depressing and dull. But several of the others are some of Finn’s favorite movies ever. In particular Say Anything. Finn knows it’s kind of a cliché now, that thing where Ballsack holds up the boombox and plays “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel for the girl of his dreams, but that part always gets Finn right there. If he’s alone, it brings a little moisture to his eyes. If he’s not alone, he’ll think about food to distract himself from getting misty.

He always thought that’d be so rad, to do that for a girl. That’s such a brave, crazy, cool move. But he’s never had a reason to.

Until tonight.

It started three days before, in glee club. Quinn’s – and a couple of her Cheerio minions’ – first rehearsal with the rest of the team. It had started...awkwardly. Actually, it had been more awkward than Ballsack’s performance in Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil.

Bad enough that Rachel wouldn’t even look at him at the start of the meeting – not that he could blame her, after the way he ran out of the auditorium - but then when Quinn ‘n’ Co. walked into the choir room, everyone went silent and stared at them, except for Rachel, who seemed to know they were coming and wouldn’t look at them either, just crossed her arms defiantly and stared at the door. She looked like she’d rather be anywhere else in the world, maybe even at a sports event.

Quite frankly, Finn knew how the Cheerios felt. It’d been a stony reception for him, too, on his first day of glee. He’d had to prove himself, and Quinn would have to prove herself too. But worse than the awkwardness of Quinn and Rachel’s proximity pulling on his every nerve was the fact that his other gleemates seemed to immediately lump him back into the “outsider” group with Quinn and her friends. The way they looked at him, it was like they didn’t know him anymore, like they hadn’t spent hours and hours together, like they hadn’t sung “Mamma Mia” together in Artie’s basement. What the hell was up with that, man? It...hurt. And it kinda pissed him off, actually. And that just made him want to be an “outsider” again. Screw those hypocrites!

So he gave Quinn a big smile and a hug and said again that he was happy she’d joined. Four pairs of stink eyes leveled upon him but he didn’t care. And of course Rachel pretended he wasn’t even there.

Mr. Schue got them organized in a row, putting Quinn next to him in the middle of the line...and Rachel on his other side. Finn cringed inside. Nice, Mr. Schue - way to go with the visual metaphor. Thanks for that.

“Okay, guys, we’re gonna start with ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ today.” Finn couldn’t help smiling slightly, pleased with that. “We’re gonna change things up a little, though. Quinn’s going to take the girl’s lead on it from now on.”

“What?” he said without even thinking. “But that’s—“ He nearly said “our song”. Even though he knew Quinn was looking at him, he couldn’t help a glance down at Rachel. She was still staring at the door – glaring at it like she was gonna beat it to a bloody pulp with her shoe, like she hated that mofoing door with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.

“Let’s start it from the top. With feeling, everyone,” Mr. S ordered, ignoring the heightened, obvious tension filling the room. Finn blinked, trying to process, trying to understand, feeling like he’d missed something, a memo, or the world’smost important homework assignment.

“A one, a two, a one-two-three-four,” Mr. S started and Finn forced his mouth to open, forced some kind of sound out. Whether it was the song, he couldn’t be sure. They had to start it over again three times before he finally tuned in. He sang. He sang what he was supposed to sing. He sang on auto-pilot. He sang with Quinn – which he’d never done, he didn’t even know she could sing! He sang with Quinn while Rachel sang back-up with the others. He sang with Quinn and not with Rachel. He sang because he had to. Not because he wanted to. Not because he had the music in him and had to let it out. Not because it made him happy. Not because it gave him that warm feeling of completion. Because he was told to.

It wasn’t that Quinn was bad... She wasn’t, really. She was pretty good. But not...not the same, Finn would say, if asked. She wasn’t Rachel, he’d admit only to himself.

During run-through number six, he glanced over at Rachel while he waited through a three bar rest. Mistake. His eyes found hers and he could see tears in them. She looked away immediately and kept singing her part, perfectly, professionally as ever, but as soon as they finished the song, she grabbed her backpack and ran out of the room full-tilt, crashing through that door like it was a defensive lineman blocking her path to the goal line.

Finn had to stop himself from running after her.

“What’s with her?” he heard one of Quinn’s friends say.

Mercedes pinned a fierce glare on Finn, saying to him more than to anyone else, “Diva-ing out,” and somehow it didn’t sound like a recrimination against Rachel. It sounded like loyalty to her.

The next day, there was no glee practice, thank god. The idea of having to go back made his stomach hurt worse than it did after that time he tried to drink a gallon of milk in less than ten minutes. Puck had seen it on Jackass and somehow trying the stunt in Puck’s backyard had seemed like a good idea at the time. Afterwards, not so much. Finn wasn’t much of a milk-drinker anymore.

He’d seen Rachel in the halls a couple times. She ignored him completely. At first he was glad but then he really wasn’t. When he stepped right in her path to stop her so that she’d have to talk to him, have to look at him, anything, she dodged him and turned straight into the girls’ bathroom so he couldn’t follow.

So he went to football practice later that afternoon and took out his mounting frustrations and growing guilt on the defensive line, practicing his run game and his tackling skills. Even quarterbacks needed to practice their tackling skills. Coach yelled at him a bit after he took down one of the huskier senior linesmen, asking if he was trying to break his throwing arm. Finn didn’t know if he was or wasn’t. Lately, inadvertent self-sabotage seemed to be his thing.

But ultimately, he didn’t feel any better after practice.

By the next day, he’d resigned himself to the idea that the rest of his life was going to be total crap. But he tried to have hope – yesterday was bad but maybe today things would be slightly better. Maybe things would evened out a little bit.

He was wrong.

The looks he got when he came through the door, the cold stares and angry squints he got from his original gleemates, made him freeze in his tracks. He got paranoid for a second – what’d he done now, was there something on his face, did they find out what had happened at Rachel’s picnic, what was the matter?

“What?” he asked.

“Rachel quit.”

“What?” he said again, disbelieving.

“She quit glee club!” Mercedes repeated.

“Why?”

“Why do you think, white boy?” He hoped he wasn’t blushing as he searched for words. “Because her enemy – your girlfriend – joined up and stole her thunder!”

“How’d you talk Quinn and her clones into joining, anyway?” Kurt asked. “Did you tell them they’d get extra credit in Spanish, too?”

“I didn’t know, okay? I didn’t ask them to join.” He was having a hard time finding the right words to defend himself – probably because he didn’t feel like he could, really, but blurted out anyway, “That’s not my fault.”

“What’s not your fault?” Quinn asked from behind him, just walking in with her friends.

“Um. Nothing.” He ran his hands through his hair, flustered and aggravated.

“It’s not your fault the drag queen bee has flown the hive, you mean?” Quinn went on, smirking. Finn looked at her sharply, suddenly furious. “Of course it’s not. If she can’t deal, then that’s her problem.”

Something welled up inside Finn, something familiar. “No,” he said, sternly. Everyone looked at him, surprised. “No, it’s our problem. Because we can’t win without her.” He almost laughed, the words nearly identical to what he’d told his football team. He glanced at Artie and saw him half-smiling, the shared memory hanging between them.

“But—“ Quinn started.

“We can’t,” he said with finality, cutting her off.

Quinn glanced at her friends, scowling.

“So what’re you gonna do about it, huh?” Mercedes asked, skeptical.

Finn looked at Quinn, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, hardness in her face, an angry pout pulling her mouth back. Quinn was very much a my-way-or-the-highway kind of girl; he knew she was the girl who always got what she wanted, no matter what, including him. Before he made starting quarterback, when he was riding the pine, she hadn’t even known his name, though they’d been in school together since junior high. After he made starting quarterback, after he threw for a hundred and fifty hundred yards in his first game, after everyone in school knew his name, she was all over him like glue. He hadn’t really had a girlfriend before, so he was an easy target – she was pretty and popular and direct and all the guys on the team wanted her. It seemed sorta like winning the lottery in a way - Hey, here’s all this money and fame all of a sudden, take it and only think later about whether you really want it or not. Everyone expected him to get with Quinn and who was he to argue with “everyone”? But he’d never stopped to ask himself if she was really what he wanted. What do you want, Finn Hudson? He’d never asked himself that. Until he joined glee.

Mercedes and everyone else were still waiting for his answer. “I’ll figure something out,” he said confidently, having no idea how but hoping something would come to him. Nonetheless, he was determined to get her back.

But his vagueness served another purpose – he didn’t want to ruffle any more feathers with Quinn. He knew they needed her, and her friends, too; they were good singers and he really did want them in glee club. They needed them to win, too. He’d have to tell Quinn that – right before he broke up with her, which he dreaded but felt relieved about, too. He wanted to do it civilly, not in front of a crowd, not in a way that would push her out of glee. That would take some doing. He may be a moron but his mom would kill him if he dumped her cold like some Neanderthal jerk. Like Puck, in other words.

Mr. Schue came in then, carrying a bunch of sheet music hot off the copy machine, announcing a new song he wanted to try out. When Finn saw what song it was, he started to smile, slowly at first, the slightest shape of an idea forming in his head. The thought grew, as did his smile, until it was a full-on plan and a bright, shining beam.

The song was “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel.

Which is how he came to be standing in Rachel’s front yard at ten o’clock at night with a boombox. He didn’t mean for it to be so late but he’d had a hard time finding a boombox – and somehow holding an iPod attached to a pair of portable speakers was both clumsy and didn’t have the effect he was aiming for. His mom had a boombox, but only with a tape deck, which was bewildering. He’d needed one with a CD player because Artie had leant him the karaoke disc with “In Your Eyes” on it, but Artie didn’t have a boombox either.

He remembered Puck’s mom had one because she liked to do aerobics in the backyard and thought headphones would make her deaf. So he raced over to Puck’s and begged to borrow it. Puck wanted to know why but Finn couldn’t tell him. He said it was an emergency and Puck smirked.

“A homo explosion emergency?”

Finn punched him in the arm and told him it was a girl emergency and to get thing now. Puck smirked again but did as he was told, holding back laughter when he returned to the door. Finn had forgotten his mom’s boombox was pink and lilac.

“Beggars can’t be choosers, dude,” Puck said, reading Finn’s face.

True that.

But now, in Rachel’s yard, holding the pink CD player, looking up at her quiet house, he’s having doubts. Which is her window anyway? Finn has no idea. Maybe he should just call her instead? But maybe she wouldn’t take his call. Maybe he should wait for her by the door at school tomorrow morning? She’d probably spot him and go in some other entrance. And his powers of talking good aren’t...good. No, this is much better. This is what Ballsack would do, dammit! But what if she doesn’t know the film, doesn’t know the cultural reference? Doesn’t everyone know the cultural reference, though? Surely, right? But Ballsack pulled this stunt in the morning, when fewer neighbors would get pissed off. But if he waits til morning, he’ll never do it, he knows. He’ll talk himself out of it by then.

It’s now or never, man.

He takes a deep breath and cues up the disc, adjusts the volume. Oh my god, he’s such a loser, right? The song starts, the intro, and he holds the boombox over his head, feeling like the biggest ‘tard in the Midwest. A dog starts barking next door. He clears his throat and prepares to sing, running through the list of all the things he’s supposed to do to support his breath. Boy is he glad they practiced this song in glee today. He opens his mouth.

“Love, I get so lost, sometimes. Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart.” His voice is shaking almost as bad as his knees are. Weak. Come on, be the Ballsack, man! He remembers to breathe and his voice strengthens. “When I want to run away, I drive off in my car. But whichever way I go, I come back to the place you are.”

A light comes on in a window on the second floor of Rachel’s house. Oh shit. But he doesn’t stop. “All my instincts, they return, and the grand facade, so soon will burn. Without a noise, without my pride, I reach out from the inside.”

The curtains in the window move, parting, and he sees a dark silhouette behind the glass. It’s not a man, he can tell, and since there are no other women living in that house, he knows it must be her. His stomach flips and he almost drops the boombox and runs. But he doesn’t. He shuts his eyes for a moment and focuses on singing, breathing, his voice echoing across her lawn, the music, the dog’s barking.

“In your eyes - the light the heat. In your eyes, I am complete. In your eyes, I see the doorway to a thousand churches. In your eyes - the resolution of all the fruitless searches.” He hears the window slide up and screws his eyes shut tighter, trying to pretend he’s alone in his room. “In your eyes, I see the light and the heat.” He chances it, slowly opening his eyes. Now he can see her, standing in her window, looking stunned. And stunning. He keeps his eyes open. “In your eyes - oh, I want to be that complete. I want to touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes.”

“What are you doing?” she calls down.

Oh crap, she hasn’t seen the movie. Maybe. “I’m-I’m...winning you back,” he chokes out, breathless.

“What?” She didn’t hear him.

Thankfully, it’s time to sing again. “Love, I don't like to see so much pain. So much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away.”

“You’re crazy!” she cries out, leaning further out the window.

“I get so tired of working so hard for our survival. I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive!”

Then suddenly the front door swings open, flooding the yard with yellowy light, and Rachel’s black dad steps onto the stoop. Wielding a golf club. A three-wood, if he’s not mistaken. “Boy, what the hell do you think you’re doing!” he bellows.

“Oh shit.” Finn starts back-pedaling, holding the boombox out in front of him like a shield.

“Daddy, no!” Rachel shouts from above, quickly disappearing from the window.

“I’m just-I’m just-I’m just--” Finn stammers, trying to shut off the boombox, failing. The song, sans vocals, continues on, sounding sort of like Muzak.

“Daddy, it’s Finn!” Rachel shouts breathlessly, running out the front door and tugging on her father’s club-wielding arm. “Did you take your contacts out? Where are your glasses?”

“Darling. It’s after ten o’clock,” her dad scolds Rachel, searching his pocket for his glasses. Finn finally manages to turn the boombox off and a sudden silence settles over their yard.

“I know, daddy, but Finn was just... Just, uh...” Rachel looks at Finn, her head tilted to one side, trying to figure out what to say, or what Finn is, in fact, doing.

“I was, uh, um, well see, I uh...” Fail. Total fail.

“Making a grand gesture,” Rachel’s other father says, coming to the door.

“Yes! A grand gesture,” Finn agrees, grasping the lifeline. He’s shaking head to toe when he admits, “I’m-I’m trying to win you back.” He says it more clearly than the first time. Rachel stares at him, a look of shock and maybe horror coming over her strong features.

“Aw, that’s so sweet,” White Dad says, clutching his hands to his chest.

“Win her back to what?” Black Dad asks, less impressed.

Rachel still looks stricken and shakes her head ever so slightly at Finn. What’s the matter with her? She must be confused - he wants to make it clear to her, why he’s here. He puts the boombox on the ground and steps forward, cautiously. “To glee club.”

“But I thought you said glee club was shut down by Principal Figgins,” her white father says to his daughter. “Did you quit glee, Rachel?”

Rachel opens her mouth to defend herself, but Finn is so nervous, he doesn’t even notice the mini-family drama taking place on the stoop, pushing forward with his speech. “Rachel, we can’t do it without you. We can’t win. And-and, more than that, it’s just not the same when you’re not there. I don’t want to be there if you’re not there, there’s no point! Quinn can’t hold a candle to you. Singing or...or otherwise. I...” He swallows. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I’ve never felt about her the way I feel about you. Please come back to glee club, Rachel. Please come back for me.”

Finn takes a long, deep breath in, trying to calm his thudding heart. She’s staring at him, looking shocked and moved and scared and happy and incredulous. She says in a small voice, “Is this the part where you throws eggs at me and race off in your car, laughing with your friends?”

He holds his hands up, taking another tentative step forward. “No eggs. And no car. Rach, I don’t want to sing without you. I want to go to Regionals with you. When we win, it’s you I want to celebrate with.” He takes another step forward, and now she takes one too. “And at States.” He steps, she steps. “And at Nationals.” They take another step closer and she’s within reach now. He stretches out a hand to her. “And-and I want to go to summer music camp with you.” He doesn’t know how he’s going to afford to go, but when she takes his hand, wrapping her small fingers around his palm, he knows he’ll find a way. He tugs her a little closer, looking down at her, right into her warm eyes. He’s so scared but he’s suddenly excited too, like he’s sitting in the front car of the biggest rollercoaster at Cedar Point.

“You mean it?” she asks. He’s not sure which part she’s referring to, but it doesn’t matter because he means it all. He nods and touches her lip the way he did on stage during his vocal lesson. “Okay,” she says, her mouth moving under his finger.

“Okay? You’ll come back?” She nods and he breaks into a big, goofy smile. “Cool!”

“Cool,” she repeats.

He leans down and kisses her, gently, chastely, aware that her fathers are still watching them. Indeed, when Rachel grips his shirt, pulling him in to kiss him harder, he hears a not-so-subtle throat clearing from the porch. He eases out of the kiss and gives her a shy grin. “Cool.”

Another throat-clearing and Rachel looks back at her fathers. “Daddy,” she warns.

“Come on, you,” her white dad says, dragging her reluctant other dad inside.

As soon as the door is closed behind her dads, Finn is kissing her again and it’s so much better than when they were on the stage, it’s so much better than kissing Quinn, it’s even better than when he and Rachel sing together. When she wraps her arms around his neck, pressing her body against his, his man luggage starts to...get packed. But he doesn’t run away this time, nor try to hide it. When she feels it, she pulls her head away, a surprised little “Oh!” escaping her throat.

“Sorry,” he says.

“No. Don’t be.” She gets serious and suddenly he can’t breathe. She gives him a steady, penetrating look, full of growing heat and that glint she gets. “I can’t wait til we get to go to camp,” she says evenly.

“Yeah, totally! I read the brochure you gave me, it sounds really, really—“ She’s looking at him oddly, a slow, sly grin spreading across her face. She lifts an eyebrow. “What?” he asks dumbly. She tilts her head a tiny fraction. His lightbulb goes off. “Oh. Ohhhhhhh. Oh!” He smiles back and holds her a little tighter. “Yeah, camp is going to be very cool.”

The end.