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Finn hears her before he sees her.
He’s in the school hallway, minding his own business and putting his books back in his locker, when he hears the determined clicking of a pair of shoes quickly advancing towards his general direction. From the way the thumping of the paces stands out, he knows it can only be one person. Finn has literally never met anyone else who walks that loud.
He barely has time to close his locker door before she’s there; Rachel Berry, coming to a dramatic halt. He looks down at her, because honestly she’s freakishly short, and he always kind of wants to mock her about it but sometimes she scares him a little and he doesn’t know how she’d respond.
“Finn,” Rachel starts before he has a chance to think more about her hobbit-adjacent height, “my life is over.”
That in and of itself isn’t too surprising; Rachel comes up to him with this exact announcement at least once a month, standing up too straight with her arms crossed over her chest and her eyebrows furrowed in theatrical worry. Something that is surprising today, though, is that Finn sees tears pooling in her brown eyes and her bottom lip is quivering in what is clearly more than just dramatics.
Shit, Finn thinks to himself, because she’s about to cry. And he hates when people cry.
“What’s wrong?” he asks carefully, feebly, not sure what might evoke a stream of tears and sobs inappropriate for the school hallway (this is Rachel. Nothing she does is ever contained enough for the general public).
Rachel sniffles before she answers him.
“Remember a few months ago, when I lost my voice?” she asks, her tone shaking a little when she does. Finn nods, because he does remember; he’d helped her through it, brought her to see his friend Sean.
“I managed to fix it myself that time,” Rachel reminds him. he remembers that, too, because it actually scared him a little, the way she’d been so casual about being sick, but he hadn’t said anything.
“And, um, I’ve been feeling not too great in the past few weeks,” Rachel continues. “I’ve been coughing more than usual, and it hurt me to swallow, and I’ve had trouble breathing at night.” Finn can see her recounting the symptoms in her head, eyebrows furrowing harder with each one. “So I went to the doctor, because I thought maybe I’m allergic to something I didn’t know, but it’s not that.” Her voice shakes again, and Finn’s heart simultaneously lurches in dread and breaks a little bit.
“Then what is it?” he asks, a little scared at whatever answer is making Rachel so upset.
“Tonsillitis,” Rachel mumbles. “I need to have them removed. As soon as possible, apparently. No home remedies can help this time.” A pitiful sound between a whine and a squeak comes out of her throat, and she quickly purses her quivering lips.
“Okay,” Finn says lamely, trying to think of something that might comfort her. Her eyes are so big that he wonders if it means she’ll cry harder than most people; somehow that seems to make sense, for her. “But are you sure there’s no other solution?”
Rachel dolefully shakes her head. “I asked. I asked so many times, you don’t even know,” she says wretchedly. “And the surgery might mean I’ll never sing again.”
“Hey, come on, that can’t be true,” Finn hurries to try and reassure her. “You’re Rachel Berry. Your throat is made of, like, steel or something.” Rachel chuckles sadly.
“Even steel rusts, Finn,” she tells him softly, her voice breaking. It’s been a little weaker over the past few weeks, now that he thinks about it; perhaps this isn’t such a sudden thing.
She clears her throat, seeming to wince at what he assumes is pain.
“I couldn’t find Mr. Schue today,” she says, trying to change the subject. “Could you tell him why I can’t be in rehearsal today? I have the surgery right after school.”
“Yeah,” Finn nods, because it’s the least he can do. “Yeah, of course.”
“Thank you.” Rachel smiles at him, weak and miserable, and he wants to find a way to make her feel better. She has the eyes of a fawn, or a bambi, or a deer or whatever you want to call it, and seeing tears in them makes Finn feel all wrong inside.
“You’ll be okay,” he tries comforting, not really sure what else to say. “You’ll get through it, you have to. In a few weeks you won’t even remember you got surgery.”
“I hope,” Rachel tries to scoff, but that seems to be the thing that breaks the dam. She chokes out a high-pitched sob, and Finn wants to crawl into a hole in the ground and take her with him, but that can’t happen so he does the only other thing he can think about; he leans forwards and hugs her.
Rachel holds him tight, strong, like everything else she does, and his heart starts beating with something that isn’t related to his uncomfortableness around emotions. She’s so small in his arms, and from the way she grasps his shirt he feels like she truly needs him, and he thinks that she has to get through this. Because he couldn’t deal with a sad, depressed, lost-her-singing-voice Rachel Berry; he thinks he might just die the first time he sees her cry more than once a day.
For the rest of the day, Finn can’t stop thinking about Rachel. The next day, too, and the day after that. He wants to call her so bad, to see that she’s okay; but his mom says that you’re not allowed to talk for two weeks after getting your tonsils taken out. And that just makes him think about Rachel even more, because he’d never seen her shut up for longer than twenty-three consecutive seconds when she isn’t in class, so having to be entirely silent for two weeks must be bordering on impossible for her. He’s sure Quinn and Mercedes would be thrilled to know about this.
Another thing his mom says is that, if he’s so curious as to how Rachel is doing, he should go visit her. He almost laughs at that idea, because that would be so weird, but the more his mom talks about it the better idea it seems. He knows where Rachel lives, been there once or twice, and her dads have seen him after Glee performances and seemed to like him. His mom says Rachel would probably be elated to have a friend visit; that it’s always nice to feel supported during hard times. Finn still insists that it’s a bad idea and he wouldn’t know what to say to make her feel better, his mom tells him to bring snacks, and four days after the surgery Finn finds himself knocking on Rachel’s house’s door with a bag of random candy he’d picked out at Target.
One of Rachel’s dads opens the door. Finn doesn’t remember his name, but he doesn’t seem offended by it and introduces himself as LeRoy. He says that Rachel’s in her room and that it’s so sweet of Finn to come visit, and Finn doesn’t blush (he doesn’t), but he does take a deep breath before he knocks on the door of Rachel’s bedroom. He hears the familiar sound of her too-loud footsteps, and then the door opens, and then she’s there.
And she looks like hell.
Or, at least, as close to hell as Rachel Berry can get. Her long, straight hair, usually organized and shiny and clean, is put up in a low bun and its bangs are flying upwards. She’s wearing mismatched pajamas, yellow plaid pants and a Cookie Monster t-shirt that Finn suspects was made for kids, although she once told him she only sleeps in pajama sets because they make her feel professional. He sees over her shoulder that her room is a pink-and-yellow mess, blankets and clothes on the floor and empty glasses littering every surface. She seems just as miserable as she’d seemed four days ago, if not worse; there are bags under her eyes and her lips are in this pout Finn thinks she isn’t aware of and she’s frowning at him in tired confusion.
“Hi,” he tells her, because what else is he supposed to say.
She keeps frowning.
“I, um, I brought you snacks.”
She frowns harder.
Finn digs into the Target bag dangling from his arm, trying to see if anything in it seems like a good thing to show her. He’d bought it all in a bit of a nervous trance, and he’s not exactly sure what’s in it.
“There’s chips,” he lists, rifling through the bag, “Skittles, gummy bears… oh, and a Bounty,” he finishes, pulling out the chocolate bar to show her with a smile he hopes doesn’t looks nervous.
To his credit, Rachel stops frowning. She looks at him blankly for a moment, before wordlessly going back inside her room. He doesn’t know whether he should follow her or not; this silent-Rachel thing is freaky, and he’s not sure he likes it. She answers his question by coming back a few seconds later with a whiteboard and a pink marker. She writes something for a few seconds before flipping the board and showing it to him.
“I’m allergic to coconut,” Finn reads aloud. And now he’s the one frowning. “Oh,” he states.
Fuck.
“Well, um,” Finn stammers, tossing the Bounty back in the bag, “Sorry. I didn’t know.” Rachel nods at him, as if to say it’s okay.
She walks inside her room again, and this time Finn feels like he should follow her, so he does. He knows her room, he’s been here before; the posters on the wall, Annie and Rent and Cabaret, are nothing he isn’t used to. Neither is the camera tripod set up in the corner, or the dresser strewn with little pink trinkets. The unmade bed and the slew of pajama pants on the floor are, however, slightly unnerving.
“So,” Finn starts awkwardly, watching as Rachel sits down on her bed, “how’ve you been?”
Rachel glares up at him, as if to say how do you think?
“What’ve you been doing?” Finn continues anyway, because he’d technically come here to cheer her up. “It must be fun, being home all the time. Right?”
Rachel grabs her whiteboard again, so Finn patiently waits until she finishes writing. In the meantime, he looks around her room; he sees that where it isn’t messy, it’s purely Rachel. Everything is Broadway and pink, and there are gold stars everywhere. He spots a little picture frame on her dresser of a little Rachel in a little ballet outfit, and barely has time to smile to himself before an older (but still kind of little) Rachel taps on his arm.
I haven’t been doing much, the board reads in a neat pink scrawl when Finn turns to look at it. Homework. TV. Stuff like that. Rachel never says stuff.
“That sounds…” Finn starts as Rachel puts the board away, trying to find a way to describe it that doesn’t make her feel worse than she already does. Rachel watches him expectantly, like she knows what’s going through his brain. “Fun?”
Rachel shakes her head.
“It can’t be that bad,” Finn tries, lying through his teeth. When Rachel just looks at him like he’s out of his mind, he gives up and reaches for the Target bag of snacks he’d brought. “Skittles?” he offers. Rachel squints, but lets him hand her the candy.
He’s not sure what else he’s supposed to do. He watches Rachel eat Skittles for a few seconds, which is already a lot longer than anyone should watch a person eat Skittles. He eats some too, when she offers, and sits next to her when she pats a space on the bed, but mostly he’s just awkwardly… there. Maybe he shouldn’t have come, he thinks after a few minutes of horrible silence. He’s used to it always being loud with Rachel, but now when she’s not talking his ear off, he doesn’t know what he should say. Maybe he should just leave. He’d brought her candy, after all, he’d been a good friend.
He's just wondering how long he has to wait before he can say he needs to be home for dinner when Rachel taps his arm. It startles him; she usually makes herself known with words, and this silence is kind of creeping him out.
She uses the whiteboard to ask if he wants to watch TV, and he says “sure”, so she grabs the remote. To Finn’s complete lack of surprise she turns on Funny Girl without asking him, but he doesn’t mind. Whatever makes her happy. Plus, Barbara Streisand has a killer voice; even he can admit that.
Finn expects the movie to make him feel less awkward, but somehow, it doesn’t. He actually feels even stranger now, because Rachel lays back in the bed so her head is leaning against the headboard, and Finn doesn’t know what he should do. Because if he leans back with her they’ll be close, and their shoulders will touch, and he’ll feel her breath on his cheek, and he doesn’t really want to picture a car accident right now. But if he just stays on the edge of the bed it’d be so weird, and he might block the TV for her, and she can’t exactly tell him to move. So he settles for scooting backwards just a little until he's half in front of her but close enough to seem somewhat normal, and Rachel doesn’t comment on it so he figures it’s fine.
He barely watches the movie. He lets his eyes wander around the room as it plays on her small TV, taking in pink and trinkets and posters. And sometimes he peeks at her, at Rachel, fascinated by the TV, and then he quickly looks away. He’d come here to cheer her up, he has to remind himself; not to feed that weird buzz he gets in his stomach whenever he looks at her for too long.
One of the times he looks at her is not too long into the movie; towards the end of I’m The Greatest Star, or something. Barbara just said that sentence a lot. Anyway, the TV’s singing, and Finn glances towards Rachel and expects to find her entranced. Unpredictably, he finds her with tears running down her face.
Rachel’s crying.
Again.
He has no idea what he should do. He doesn’t even know why she’s crying, this time, he just knows that he hates it and he wants it to stop and maybe he really shouldn’t have come here.
“Rachel?” he asks anyway. He wants to make this better. He will make this better. “What’s wrong?”
Rachel looks at him as if she’s just now remembering he’s there. Her eyes are big and brown, but also red, and her lips are in a wretched pout. Finn wants to hug her again, the way he’d done four days ago; but he doesn’t, because that’d feed the crap out of the buzz he’s trying to ignore. Instead, he helplessly watches as Rachel grabs her whiteboard and starts writing.
A few seconds later she turns it towards him, a fresh tear running down her cheek.
I hate not talking, the board says. Finn wants to tell her that he understands, but she pulls it away from him and starts writing again, so he stays silent. It’s the least he can do. She writes for longer, this time, but after a bit she shows him the board again.
I haven’t posted on Myspace in days, people might think I’m dead. Finn doesn’t tell her that the only people who look at her Myspace are the Cheerios, and that they do it mainly to bully her. He just keeps reading. And Glee club must be falling apart without me.
“It actually kind of is,” Finn responds, hoping to cheer her up. “We all miss you. We can barely rehearse now, since almost every song is yours.” He feels like this might work; he knows she loves being praised. But at his comment, Rachel’s face twists and he knows that if she could she’d be letting out a high-pitched whine.
He’s about to ask what he said wrong when she grabs her whiteboard again, so he shuts his mouth to read what she has to say.
She writes for almost a whole minute; scribbling something and then erasing it, and then scribbling, and then erasing again. Finn sits impatiently until she shows him the board, her lips quivering.
Then you might never be able to rehearse, it says simply in a pink handwriting much less neat than Rachel’s usual one. Finn’s heart breaks a little.
“Hey, come on, don’t say that,” he tries lamely, the dejected look on Rachel’s face making him feel… well, not great. She shakes her head at him, as if to tell him to not even try, but he continues anyway. “You’ll be singing again in two weeks.”
Rachel doesn’t ask how he knows of that specific timeframe. She just sadly looks down and starts writing again; Finn watches her, helpless, wanting to just grab her and hug her until she stops crying. Until she stops looking at him like that, her fawn-bambi-deer eyes filled with tears she doesn’t deserve.
But what if I won’t? the board says when Rachel raises it again. What if none of my dreams will come true because of this? No one can know if I’ll recover, and I hate not knowing. The word hate is underlined twice, in pure Rachel fashion.
“Look, Rach…” Finn sighs, the nickname coming out of him before he even notices. She doesn’t correct him. He doesn’t correct himself.
Barbra Streisand is still singing on TV, and Finn feels like it’s not making any of this better.
“This sucks,” he states anyway. “Like, really sucks. And I’m sorry it’s happening to you.” Rachel’s still looking at him sadly, silent tears running down her cheeks, and it kills him inside.
“But you’ll get through it,” he continues. He’s convincing her and only her, entirely sure that what he’s saying is true. And he knows anyone with half a mind would be sure of it, too. “You’re amazing, and you’re strong. A surgery isn’t going to be the thing that breaks you, and we both know that.” Rachel gives him a soft, barely-there smile, big brown eyes still shining with tears that don’t fall.
And this time, She’s the one who hugs him; lurches forward and throws her arms around his neck.
Finn’s startled, and caught off-guard, and however else you choose to call the way his heart starts pounding. He wraps his arms around Rachel’s waist, carefully holding her close. She’s making his shirt wet, he vaguely registers, but he doesn’t mind at all. The TV’s still singing, but he barely notices it; he’s too focused on Rachel, in his arms, clutching him like she needs him. Like he’s helping.
The buzz in his stomach is going wild.
He ends up finishing about half of Funny Girl with her, laying back on her bed so their shoulders touch, before he actually does need to go home for dinner. She walks him to the doorstep, whiteboard in hand, seemingly in much better spirits than she’d been earlier. She taps his arm one last time before he leaves, and he looks at the whiteboard on automat.
Thank you, it says, a pink heart drawn in the end of the last word. It makes Finn smile.
“You’re welcome,” he says honestly. And before he knows what’s happening, Rachel stands up as high as she can on the tips of her toes and kisses his cheek.
It’s only for a second, barely a brush of her lips; but by the time he’s out of her house, he’s as pink as the pillows on her bed.
He eats the Bounty bar on his way home, happy he got free candy out of this. Okay, not exactly free. He paid for it. But, technically, it was supposed to be for Rachel. And it’s not like it matters much, anyway; costly as it is, a chocolate bar is still a chocolate bar.
(And brief as it is, a kiss is still a kiss).