Title: Ghosts of the Past

Fandom: Glee

Pairing/Characters: Finn Hudson, Tina Cohen-Chang

Rating: FR13

Disclaimer: Glee belongs to Ryan Murphy and company.

Prompts: Written for 5_prompts' VRD challenge for the prompt of out of the blue .

Notes: Future!fic. There's no spoilers past Season One.

Summary: Finn runs into Tina years after Glee club.

Word Count: 806

None of the original Glee club members have seen one another since Nationals in their senior year despite their best attentions to keep in touch and stay close no matter where their futures took them. It wasn't that they didn't want to keep in touch it was just that their dreams took them in so many different places and directions that keeping in touch with a bunch of people from Lima seemed impossible.

Finn Hudson was the only one who stayed behind in Lima. Or more accurately came back. A football injury during college had ruined any chances of him playing professional so he had gone into education and ended up at West McKinley years later. Things had changed at the high school since he had gone there but still every now and then he almost expected to see the ghosts of his past: Will Schuester arguing with Coach Sylvester about Glee club; Rachel trailing behind him in one of her atrocious sweaters as she stared up at him with stars in her eyes; Quinn and Puck walking hand in hand as they ruled the school.

Yet he never does see the ghosts of his past. The school is full of new staff and new kids, and he's the only one from his past in his future. When the new principal calls him to the office at the start of a new year and asks him how he feels about taking over Glee club, Finn is hesitant at first. But in the end, he has taken on the extra duty. He remembered what Glee had done for a group of misfits who had been rather lonely until they had found one another.

He was beginning to regret it during his first session with the club. Finn couldn't imagine how Will Schuester had handled them all as long as he did. The group of his he had were temperamental, snotty, casually cruel to one another and everything else that teenagers typically were. Still when he went home that night and saw the framed picture of his Glee club taken when they had won Nationals, he decided to stick with it. He truly believed that it couldn't get any worse.

Two days later, Finn was pretty sure that if his group of kids made it to Sectionals, he'd be amazed. He was tidying up the music room, putting away songbooks and organizing sheet music when there was a knock on the door. He turned and was surprised to see Tina standing in the doorway. For a moment, he almost thought that it was one of his ghosts from the past until she smiled at him and entered the room.

“Hey Finn, I heard rumors that you'd taken on West McKinley's Glee club,” Tina said.

“Yeah, guess I am a sucker for punishment.”

“I must be too, I took on Vocal Adrenaline.”

Finn did a double take while Tina nodded.

“I got a job at Carmel a few years back and this year I was approached to take on Glee because of my past involvement in the club here.”

“So are we going to be mortal enemies?”

Tina laughs, “Hardly. I just thought I'd come by and tell you before you heard it through the proverbial show choir grapevine.”

“Good,” Finn replies as he shoves his hands in his pockets, unsure of what to say next.

“Want to go for coffee sometime?” Tina asks. “Catch up on old times?”

“Sure, when's a good time for you?”

“Are you busy now?”

Finn pauses for a second and thinks about all that he has to go home for and realizes that there's not much. He has his lessons planned out for the first few months and there's nothing to mark as of yet. And Glee hasn't really gotten to the point where it needs him to do much with it either, the kids have just been trying to find their places within in the choir.

“Not really, you?”

She gives him a smile that tells him that her life is pretty much like his right now. If it was a few months from now, chances are they'd not really have this much time, but right now they do.

“Let me just lock up here and we can go.”

As he follows her out of the door, Finn realizes that this out of the blue meeting with Tina has made him feel comfortable at West McKinley for the first time since he came back. He no longer feels like a ghost haunting the corridors of the school. And as they walk out side by side, the ghosts of whom they once were, of their friends and classmates seem to melt into the hallways and into the past where they belong. Tonight he'll be making new memories and putting the past to rest.


((END))

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