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Finn Hudson would probably always have feelings for Quinn Fabray. She was his first girlfriend, his first kiss, his first love…
***
They’ve only been back for two weeks when he finally has to face her again. He’d successfully avoided seeing her and talking to or about her all summer long. But then in Britney week when they’re rehearsing ‘Toxic’ for the pep assembly (he still thought it was weird that Mr Schue wanted to perform with them) there’s a section of the performance where the two are paired up. She faces away from him and starts to grind against him, as were the instructions, and Finn feels a familiar tug in his stomach… and lower. It’s a feeling he used to get when they made out. The feel of her body pressed up against his, her lips moving softly against his. He can’t even look at a strawberry without tasting her lip gloss. He can practically feel her hands gently pushing him away like she used to as he pulled her closer. But this time it takes everything in his power not to jump away from her. Instead he grits his teeth, directs his thoughts towards a certain mailman and finishes rehearsal. And when Mr Schue decides they’d practiced enough and dismisses the club for the evening, Finn pulls him aside and beggs him to switch her with someone else. It’s not hard to do considering everything that went down between the two. So in the next rehearsal when he can feel her disappointed frown as Mr Schue tells her to swap spots with Brittany, he avoids eye contact by staring at his shoelaces.
***
He’s very aware that he brought it on himself when he has to sit straight faced next to his girlfriend and watch the love of his life girl who smashed his heart into a thousand pieces sing a love song with someone who was basically a blonde version of himself. He went along with Rachel’s plan to get them to be partners but he didn’t really realise she would move on so easily. He’d hoped that there would be a little bit of pining, lord knows he had been. So instead he sits there and pretends that it doesn’t bother him when she gazes lovingly into the eyes of another man and sings about being in love with her best friend (he knows the feeling). He thinks back to the day she waited for him outside the bathroom, when she asked him if they could be in love again. He remembers the way his heart broke a little bit, because he’d never stopped being in love with her. He still hasn’t. He claps with false enthusiasm when they finish and then struggles to pay attention for the rest of the lesson. He manages to catch himself glaring at Sam as he walks out with Quinn before Rachel does and instead forces himself to celebrate their ‘victory’ with a quick kiss.
***
Three weeks later Mr Schue is sick. The substitute, Holly Holiday, lets them sing a CeeLo song and Finn is mesmerised by the swishing of her Cheerio’s skirt when she, Santana and Brittany, twirl around. He gets an odd feeling of satisfaction as he watches her push Puck away while they sing ‘Forget You’. It’s the simple things, you know. Then later in the week, they’re rehearsing a genius mash up of ‘Umbrella’ and ‘Singing in the Rain’ when she somehow manages to kick water directly into his eyeball. “Oh my god, Finn!” she rushes over to him where he’s holding his eye and blinking furiously (Mr Schue added glitter to the water to make it extra shiny and it burns like a bitch). “I’m so sorry, are you okay?” She places a hand gently on his arm as if she’s afraid he’ll push her off, but he doesn’t.
“I’m okay,” he groans, “It really burns,”
Quinn grabs his hand guides and him backstage onto a chair. If he could see he’d probably be intimidated by the intense glare that Rachel is giving Quinn, but he can’t and honestly, he kind of doesn’t care. He’s not sure where from (can’t see remember) but she somehow produces a towel and starts to gently dab at his eye. She pulls softly on his top lid to open his eye and, although a little blurry, the sight of her hazel eyes looking intensely at him brings him right back to last year, when she was wiping the remnants of a grape slushy off of his face.
“This is like feng shui,” he says softly.
She pauses her wiping and raises her brow. “What are you talking about?”
“Last year when we got slushied by Karofsky.. feng shui, you know, when something's happened before,”
Quinn breathes out a laugh and shakes her head. “I think you mean déjà vu,”
“Yeah that,” Finn relaxes into her touch and when he opens his eyes again - full vision restored – she’s staring at him thoughtfully. “What?”
Quinn looks at her feet and shakes her head. She drapes the towel over his shoulder and takes a step back. “All better?” she asks him.
Finn grins at her, “Yeah, thanks,” only he’s not just talking about his eye.
Quinn smiles softly at him, making his heart flutter and heads back to rehearsal.
***
After the ‘Singing in the Rain’ incident, he finds himself smiling at Quinn Fabray a lot more. In previous weeks, he avoided making eye contact with her, because it made his stomach knot up and he’d get a lump in his throat. Now he just feels warm, and not in an Oh-Crap-Think-Of-The-Mailman way, but in a nice way. Something had changed between them. It was almost like it was back when they were a couple of freshmen with crushes, before they even started dating.
At his mother’s wedding he and the other glee guys are hanging around in a lounge waiting for the girls to finish getting ready for the performance. They walk in as a group and when he catches sight of her in her red satin dress with her long blonde hair flowing down her back and her eyes sparkling, his breath catches in his throat. He’s not sure why but he flashes back to a little over a year ago. The sight of her walking out of their - her - first sonogram appointment. She’d been attempting to hide how scared she was, but now, she was smiling radiantly. A beautiful juxtaposition to a painful memory.
Luckily Rachel walks in after her, which jerks him back to the present and he trains his focus onto her, managing to only sneak occasional glances at his ex-girlfriend. Quinn only catches him a few times.
And when she starts dating Sam and Mr Schue assigns the new couple a duet to perform at Sectionals, Finn doesn’t even mind. He knows it’s only a matter of time. She was his first love, and first loves are forever.