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Rae examines the woman carefully, tries to sniff out the similarities between her and Finn, only finding the curve of her nose familiar. She gives up and wants to turn the page, when she clocks Finn’s sad stare.
Immediately, a rush of sympathy tinged with an affection only reserved for Finn surges in her being. She bites her lip, contemplating on calling him out on it or extending him the privacy of his own thoughts. But when that dejected expression of his doesn’t dissipate, and appeals to her puppy-loving self, she sighs and bites the bullet.
Carefully watching his face, she asks: “Do you miss her?”
What a stupid question, she chides herself. But then she sees the slightly upturned corners of his mouth, and realises that he might have been waiting for her to ask. Rae frowns slightly – god, she really needed to brush up on her people’s skills. Especially now that she had a boyfriend.
He folds his hands under his chin, his face thoughtful, subtly leaning into her. It’s not lost on Rae, and she fights the urge to smile. “Yeah,” he answers, nodding sombrely. His eyes are full of pent-up frustration, and she can’t help the pity flicker across her face but immediately steels her expression. Finn, however, had caught it.
He chuckles good-naturedly, but it sounds weak. “I’m fine,” he assures her, but his voice falters and he has his puppy dog look on again. It’s not as cute as usual, and it doesn’t make Rae go full gushington central as usual. Instead it connects to a deeper part to her, a hollow part, where the absence of her father still remains. She finds herself copying his expression, as her thoughts tune into a station she hadn’t been to for a while.
Her grip on the album weakens and it slides into her lap unceremoniously. Her burning gaze on Finn however does not wane. He takes notice of the shift in her demeanour and looks alarmed, putting a hand on her arm gently. “Rae?”
She shakes her head in an attempt to clear her mind from her dark thoughts, which were slowly edging to the previously uncharted territory of her daddy issues. But she is determined to put the focus back on Finn, and would so despite her discomfort. “I’m fine,” Rae echoes his words back to him. “But are you?” She then takes a deep breath, aware that she’s currently crossing a big boundary between them: family. “Tell me about her.”
She’s his girlfriend, after all. That’s what she’s here for, right?
Finn seems taken aback and she swears his face light up for only a moment before they change to his usual stoically cool expression. Shame fills her. Why didn’t she ask about his stuff sooner? Why didn’t she show him that she cared? Because she did. And he obviously wanted her to.
I suck at this girlfriend thing.
Keeping her musings at bay, Rae smiles encouragingly when she spots him wringing his hands together, suddenly nervous. His leg starts to bounce uncontrollably, and Rae patiently reaches out to hold it still, and then strokes his jean-clad knee soothingly. Her hand brushes up his thigh, and just like that he stops his erratic movements. But she doesn’t go any higher, and travels back down his knee again. She doesn’t look at him and thus misses the flash of disappointment on his face, instead concentrating on the way his shoulders relax.
“All right then,” he concedes, discreetly eyeing Rae’s hand on him. She hasn’t moved it yet, and isn’t planning to until she hears him out. Finn sighs, his eyes flickering to the album on Rae’s lap, open on the page of his childhood photos.
He reaches out to the photographic memoir of his mother, fingers lightly brushing over her face but not yet touching. A corner of his mouth quirks up. “I don’t remember everything. I was too young, and the memories are too painful sometimes. But what I do recall was her doting on me all the time.” His mouth stretches into a full-blown smile. “She was so damn protective: forcing me to keep a note with my name, address and phone number on it in my pocket, checking for any marks or bruises when I came home from school, always tagging along with me to the Rutlands. She thought I’d slip into the mud and suffocate to death or something.”
Rae lets out a tinkling laugh, and Finn looks at her with such intensity it shuts her up immediately. She wonders if it’s too soon.
If it is, he doesn’t comment and simply carries on. “Details like that I always remember. But I know a time where she was less … strung, I’d say. But I don’t remember what changed. In the time leading up to her leaving, she kept an eye on me always, and back then it used to bug me. I only learned to appreciate that after she left when I was eight, and my dad let me go anywhere without question and without supervision. I even wrote my own ‘identification’ notes, and kept them in my pockets. When my dad saw them while doing the washing, he burst into tears.” He takes a deep, loaded breath, as if he was to start crying himself, and Rae’s at a loss. She doesn’t know how to comfort him. Spying his hand only inches away from her, she grasps it tightly. When his miserable expression doesn’t change, she decides to scoot closer to him and replace her hand on his thigh.
Finn looks at her questioningly when she moves her hand but his face relaxes when she places it on his waist instead, and pulls him closer. He rests his forehead against her and sighs, his warm breath fanning over her face while she takes one of her own. Rae tentatively brushes her nose against his and revels in the intimacy of the moment. She smiles when he raises his hand up and hesitantly strokes her cheek. He finally cracks a smile of his own when she leans into his touch. It’s not much, but she’s glad that she at least managed to keep him from breaking down.
Rae’s beyond happy that they’re moving forward in their relationship. No, they hadn’t had sex yet and yes, she is as mad as ever – but communication-wise, they were improving. Of course he didn’t elaborate on why exactly his mum left (maybe he doesn’t know), and she hadn’t breathed a word about her own broken home. All she knows was that yesterday, she didn’t even know whether his mum was alive and today she has found out that not only is she alive, but very much away from her son.
After a moment of comfortable silence in which she just loses herself in the essence of Finn, he nuzzles her cheek with his nose. She has to keep from laughing – he’s such an adorable geek sometimes. Rae imagines a puppy in his place, and then kicks herself for thinking of Finn as a dog-creature once again.
Eventually, Finn lets his hand fall away from her face and moves to stand up and Rae can hardly keep in her sound of indignation. Finn chuckles softly before standing up to his full height and holding out his palm towards her. She grabs it begrudgingly.
He proceeds to look at her with such adoration that Rae exhales longer than necessary, and impulsively kisses him on the nose. He giggles (or the male equivalent of giggling) and squeezes her hand, nodding towards the stairs. “Let’s go up, yeah? My arse can’t stand the floor any longer.”
Rae discreetly checks out his behind, before letting out a huff. “So the picnic blanket wasn’t so effective, was it?” She asks, alluding to their argument of cushioning their coccyges against the unforgiving floor with musty old cotton fabric.
Finn shrugs sheepishly. “I guess I underestimated the differences between grass and linoleum.” He then grins, tugging her hand towards the door and she forgets her annoyance with him as they bound up the stairs and she’s granted an obscene view of his wiggling bum, definitely still intact. He glances behind his shoulder as if he could sense her wandering eye, and gives her a winning smile.
She grins at him, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles, before letting her gaze drop to the jackpot again. I wonder how much harm exactly the floor has done to that arse … And as Finn pulls her into his room, puts his hands on her shoulders and forces her to walk back until her knees hit the bed, she vows to find out.