take me back to the start

Chapter 17: Tired of Holding This Pose

Rachel clasped her hands nervously as her taxi drove closer and closer to Finn's hotel. The events of the day had thrown her for a total loop, and she no longer had any notion of the difference between good decisions and bad decisions. Everything she had thought she knew about herself and Finn, and their relationship, had been turned upside down, and now she was just completely disoriented.

The taxi arrived at the large modern hotel Finn was staying at and Rachel paid him slowly. She was trying to give herself time to back out.

But the impulse to see Finn, help him, comfort him,be with him, was too strong to be ignored any longer. And it had successfully overruled her habit of overanalyzing every situation involving Finn and categorizing it to be a bad decision.

She stared at the revolving doors, the occupied bellhops and valet drivers, all bustling with purpose, energy. She craned her neck and lifted her head to try to see the very top of the building. Somewhere up there, on the highest story (she knew that he was staying in the same suite the studio had set him up in during his first visit) Finn was there, drunk and hurting. Gritting her teeth, she marched into the swanky lobby of the hotel. She didn't look back.

Finn lay sprawled out on his bed, eyes closed, stereo booming loudly. An almost empty bottle of Jack Daniels in his right hand and his guitar in his left. Radiohead's epic song, Creep, was on repeat, and he let the low, hypnotic rhythm, and the lyrics reflecting his feelings of displacement, drown out his thoughts.

He moved his head to look at the empty bottle in his hand angrily. Why couldn't he stop? He sat up and threw it against the wall. He didn't even flinch as it crashed noisily and shattered into a thousand pieces.

Taking his guitar, he started strumming some chords randomly. He stared out the window, and the shining city vibrating with life beneath him. Rachel was somewhere out there. Like her place in his heart, she was near, but too far away and unreachable at the same time.

He inhaled deeply, letting the stuffy air clear some of the alcohol out of his system, before moving his fingers deftly across the guitar strings to play his favorite song..

Rachel exited the elevator and walked evenly to Finn's room on the easternmost side of the hotel. She felt her throat clog up when she saw that the 'do not disturb' sign was lodged between the door and the wall, leaving his room open for anyone to come waltzing in to. He was too drunk and messed up to even properly close his door...

She knocked loudly.

No answer.

She knocked again, even louder.

Rachel panicked, remembering the reason she was here in the first place.

I can't believe Kurt and his mother are letting him live by himself! He is clearly not in the correct frame of mind to be self-sufficient!

The worries and what-if scenarios began piling up in her head until finally she pushed the door and went in uninvited. She breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the low rumbles of Finn's voice emit from his bedroom area.

Walking quietly to the shadowed doorframe (he was facing the other way) she watched as he let himself go into his music, opening his lips to sing.

"If you walk away I'll walk away

first tell me which road you will take

I don't want to risk our paths crossing someday

so you walk that way I'll walk this way

and the future hangs over our heads

and it moves with each current event