A/N: Just a quick one-shot that I had to do when someone mentioned Finn and Rachel sitting on the airplane looking at those cups…

Disclaimer: Glee's not mine. Unfortunately, because otherwise I'd be raking in all those profits instead of having to stick to writing fanfic and trolling tumblr during late night work shifts.

First Class Doesn't Do Plastic Cups

To say that he is nervous is putting it mildly, but if he's honest he doesn't even know what he's nervous about. There's just this feeling… this feeling of something that is going to happen, and he doesn't know whether to be afraid of it or elated about it. Just like he's not sure whether he should be happy they're on their way to New York (crap, it's like, real, they're on a plane to New York City!) or he should feel - he doesn't really know what else he feels about it, but it's like a giant lump of mess in his whole body , like his head and his heart and every part of him are kinda wound up around each other and twisting and knotting themselves tighter together the closer they get.

Maybe that's making him nervous. That feeling. That feeling – the one that tells him all these knots and twists have to come undone at some point or he's gonna, like, choke himself. Though he doesn't know if that can apply to someone's insides (can you actually choke a heart?) but it feels like there's this thing stuck inside him, and it's growing with every moment, and the twisting and the knotting is just to keep it in there.

He's sort of trying to ignore it, though.

He has a pretty good idea now, what that thing inside him is. It's not really a thing – it's a feeling, more like – but then again, it is. A kind of giant thing. A thing that keeps fighting the twists and knots around it, because for a moment back there it got to break free, and then it had to be caught and reigned back in. Because it looked like it's the wrong kind of thing.

It's taken him so long to figure it out, and yet again, he's too late.

He kinda gets the whole joke with karma now. Because he's pretty sure that her having given up on them just as he's finally figured out what he suspects she's known all along… yeah, that's like his real punishment. That's his karma, coming to bite him in the ass. And the bite is pretty deadly, he thinks, going by the feeling inside his heart.

But he's surviving. He's focusing on Nationals. He's trying to look forward to being in New York, even though it's, like, her city (and he's trying not to think of all the plans she had for them together there because now that he wishes he could do them with her… yeah…. he can't even finish that thought cos it just adds a bit more to the feeling inside him of his heart slowly dying). He's trying to keep a lid on this mess inside him, trying to keep his feelings in check.

"Would you like something to drink?"

He's startled out of his racing thoughts by the flight attendant looming above him, her question punctuated by a raised eyebrow and the noise of some beverage being poured into a glass on that cart thing in front of her. Does he want anything…? Does he want anything…? (Besides Rachel to love him again?) He watches her hold out some white liquid to Kurt who is sitting by the window looking slightly pale, before returning her attention to him with the raised eyebrow still in place.

"Umm… can I have a coke?" he says, not really feeling thirsty but thinking it's probably a good thing to stay hydrated because the humidity in an airplane is not adequate for their vocal chords (he can still hear Rachel's voice in his ear and see her facial expression as she complained about it to Mr Schue at take-off). "Uhhh please?" he remembers to add after a second, but the flight attendant doesn't seem to pay attention anyway as she's expertly pulling open a miniature can of coke with one hand and reaching for a glass to pour it in with her other hand.

For a split second, there's this twinge in his heart.

In his mind's eye, he sees Rachel, pouring out red liquid from a flask into two plastic cups. "The cups are like airplane cups," he remembers himself say. And his heartbeat speeds up, drumming fast and hard inside his chest – just like then.

But there's no plastic airplane cup with red liquid, and the hand holding out the glass of soda to him is not Rachel's.

1st class doesn't do plastic cups, apparently.

He wonders if that's like a metaphor for the state of their relationship now. Though he's not quite sure how it applies, but it kinda feels like maybe she's passed on to something bigger and better than him and he's still there wishing for what he can't have. (That kinda makes awesome sense! Or, more than he thought.)

That just makes him feel even worse than he already felt a minute ago, though.

He doesn't know when he started having all those feelings at once, or how it's even possible to have that many. There's like – there's the pain from knowing he's too late, and there's the thing he can't bear to say out aloud now because it adds to the pain but he also kinda feels like he wants to shout it from the roofs of New York because it's that amazing that something like that even exists. And then there's his nervousness about Nationals, and there's… huh? Wait, what? He wants to shout it from the roofs…? (His mind just made like a total mental double-take, how fucking weird is that?) No, no, that's no good, there's no point to that, it's just going to make more of a mess of this whole situation, and it's not like she loves him anymore, not like he loves her and he doesn't really know what to do but he kinda wants to tell her anyway, to make it right with her, set the record straight, and now he's totally thought the thing he didn't want to think about, but yeah who is he trying to kid, where's the point in pretending it doesn't exist when he knows better now, and maybe he should just forget about trying to hide it from her cos who's he kidding she's gonna realize it someday and everything's gonna be even more awkward between them then and definitely like so much too late it would seriously kill the both of them on the spot and- seriously, can he just stop thinking entirely? It's all just so much to take in at once, and there's this whole kissing-Jerkface-and-singing-songs-about-not-wanting-him-back-anymore thing happening anyway, which kinda means he's lost out by default cos the guy apparently can do no wrong whereas he's the galaxy's biggest fuck-up, and-

"An iced tea, please, " he hears her say, her voice loud and clear as if she was sitting right next to and not two seats over and a row behind him. That by-now familiar twinge returns with a vengeance at her words; for a moment it feels like he's going to die on the spot from everything her voice alone just makes his heart want to burst with all these emotions.

"Could have it in a plastic cup, actually?"

He freezes. The flight attendant replies with something but he can't make out any words because suddenly it seems like his heart has stopped and the world with it. But he has no trouble hearing Rachel's response; in fact, it's like there's no other sound in the world.

"Oh, it's just – a sentimental preference. Don't worry about it."

His heartbeat rushing through his ears, he slowly turns his head to look at her past the heads of his Glee team members. And even though it had been impossible before to do so – Brittany's and Artie's seats having been in the way – he miraculously catches a glimpse of her.

She's looking at the crystal glass full of red liquid in her hand, her eyes with that faraway look that she always used to get when dreaming of that future she dreamt up for them; only that now there is a sadness about her that hadn't been with her then. Her finger moves up to her lips, touching a spot above them, and lingering there.

He knows what they're both thinking now.

It's not until her finger moves up to brush away the tears spilling from her eyes that she looks over to him. He looks away, trying to make it seem like he wasn't watching her at all; his heart's beating impossibly loud now inside his chest. For a moment he stares ahead of himself, his mind drawing a complete blank for a change. His heart is… his heart is just full of that thing again. That thing called love.

And when he looks back at her again (because he's a fool, and in love, and fools in love are known to do really all sorts of foolish things that no one in their right mind wanting to protect their heart from any further damage would do, right?) she's still looking at him, and this time their eyes meet.

And there's something in hers that make him wonder if she's only been pretending, too.