Glee: Hot for Teacher

[hopenight.livejournal.com]

 

Title:  Hot For Teacher
Author: hopenight
Beta:  starryskies
Fandom: GLEE
Pairing: Will Schuester/Finn Hudson
Spoilers: Up to and including Sectionals (1x13)
Word Count: 3, 406
Author’s Notes: I would like to thank my amazing beta: starryskies/gleeful_beat who provided many of the Winn moments for me to look at. Also the people over at the winnners community who helped me find recs! This is dedicated to you guys!

 

 

Will Schuester: It wouldn't make any difference. Possession is eight-tenths of the law. I'm pretty sure that much pot is a felony! Yeah. You'll get kicked out of school. You'll lose your football scholarship.

Finn Hudson: Wait... I had a football scholarship? To where? –‘Pilot’ (Episode one, Season one)

 

Glee, the year’s breakout show, has ensnared my heart in its musical filled, teenage dramedy, yet sweetly endearing grasp. It’s not a show about the popular kids or the rich snobs. It’s not set in New York or California. It’s the complete, utter opposite of the all the other teenage melodramas on television. It’s a show about misfits. Even the so-called popular kids are shown to be self conscious about regular issues. Their problems are things that we, the audience, encounter. But really, let’s face it folks, Glee is the show that caters to the freaks, geeks, nerds, and misfits of today and yesteryear (and possibly the future). As a proud high school geek, I am finally jumping in unadulterated joy that on television there can be a good musical show with ACTUAL drama, with the question of a happy ending hanging dubiously in the air. This fandom and the show have become like crack to me.

                With that said, the pairing that I am here to represent is between Spanish teacher Will Schuester and the male lead of glee club/sports star Finn Hudson. Before I turn into complete and utter mush over this pairing and highlight why I think this would most definitely work, I will like to introduce you to our two boys.

Will Schuester: My father always said you become a man when you buy your first house. I'm not sure what he meant by that, since he burned ours down once after a drunken fight with Mom. –‘Showmance’ (Episode 2, Season 1)

 

 WILL SCHUESTER (Matthew Morrison)
           This, my lovely readers, is William Schuester. Let me give you a moment to merely bask in the utter adorkable-ness of him. Will is a young, popular Spanish teacher at his alma mater William McKinley High School. The “golden boy” during his high school days, Will is trying to get the glee club “New Directions” off the ground. However, he faces opposition from all sides. Cheerleading Coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) is trying to shut down the glee club in order for the cheerleaders (a.k.a. Cheerios) to absorb the club’s budget. His high school girlfriend and now wife, Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig) is faking a pregnancy in order to get Will to leave his job and keep their (obviously) failing marriage together. As he attempts to find the balance between teacher, mentor, and supporter to the members of the club; he still must put up with diva personalities, teenaged drama, and trying to keep the kids interested and appeased.

All in all, he’s basically up for canonization for sainthood.

Finn Hudson: Being a guy my age is tough. Between Glee and football and school and being popular, I'm just kind of overwhelmed. Everyone wants something from me, and I don't have the energy to do it all. I don't know how important people like Presidents or newscasters or mob bosses do it. My mom says I'm stretched too thin, so I gave up homework; but that didn't help. All I know is, last night I got vaporized on level two. Level two. And I didn't even have the energy to care. –‘Vitamin D’ (Episode 6, Season 1)

 FINN HUDSON (Cory Monteith)
             This, ladies and gentleman, is the sweet, naïve, and adorably oblivious Finn Hudson. Isn’t he cute? I want to take him home and bake him some chocolate chip cookies or just give him a hug! (But this isn’t about me gushing over two of my favorite actors even though I would all day long.) Finn is the school’s current golden boy. The quintessential All American boy, Finn is the captain of the football team, dating the head cheerleader, and is a pretty damn nice guy to everyone who’s around him (or at least he tries to be). The only child of a single working mother, Finn found his passion for music by singing with one of his mom’s ex-boyfriends. He kept his talent under wraps until Will came to the football players’ locker room to try to convince them to join the newly started-up glee club.

When Will was leaving, he heard Finn singing in the shower, and immediately decided to recruit him to Glee Club – though I’ll get into the specifics of this scene later. Struggling to find balance between being the popular football star and the glee club’s usual male lead has been hard for Finn. He has taken a lot of shit from his friends and his girlfriend, Quinn (Dianna Agron). Life doesn’t get easier for him, once Quinn reveals that she is pregnant. Though she swears its Finn’s child, the baby is actually his best friend Puck’s (Mark Salling).

Finn has a lot on his shoulders and tries to do the best thing in a tough situation.

Emma: (to Will) If we were to rank crushable teachers in this school, you'd be number one with a bullet. –‘Ballads’ (Episode 10, Season 1)

 

Finn: (to Kurt) I’m sick and tired of people pushing me to be someone I’m not- ‘Ballads’ (Episode 10, Season 1)

Reader: So why does this pairing work, HopeNight?

Glad you asked reader!

Now as you read from their character biographies, both Will and Finn are nice, sweet, laid back guys who are surrounded by people pushing them into roles that they are not suited/ready for. Will in the Pilot episode was almost pushed into being an accountant by his wife, Terri. Meanwhile, Finn is being forced into the role of provider and father, which he isn’t sure that he can do yet.

These two guys are devoted to their respective (lying) partners. Will would do anything for his wife, except give up his career, even taking a job as a janitor at one point in order to save up for a house. Finn tries to find a job in order to support the doctor bills for Quinn. Even after Quinn’s parents had kicked her out of the house, Finn offers his own home to her.

All in all, these two would give the shirt off their back if a complete stranger asked for it. This makes the pain and heartbreak they suffer once discovering the truth even more palpable to the audience.

This is the main case for Winn fans (Will + Finn = Winn). These two are the only two who can understand what the other one is going through. They have been betrayed, hurt, and wounded emotionally by people they trusted and loved. If I went through an experience like that, I would search for someone who I could connect with in order to heal and move on. Winn is the pairing where you would go to for your broken heart, since the majority of the fics end happily mainly due to the fact that no one has the heart to put them through anymore crap! It would be akin to kicking a puppy or a kitten or something of equal cuteness.

This is a pairing that allows there to be angst, heartache, unrequited feelings and yet things somehow work out in the end. There’s no room for Disney in Winn, but there is room for something close to happiness that is earned between a couple.

There’s obvious betrayal and heartache. Then there’s the whole age difference and student teacher relationship. It’s a total forbidden fruit type deal, that makes us excited on so many levels. Then there is a fact that these would be the guys that most girls and boys would want to bring home to mom and dad. So why shouldn’t they end up with each other? (Plus the fact that they’re both smokin’ hot is a definite plus.)

However, don’t just take my word for it. Winn fan, queen125; told me when I asked why she liked the pairing: “Winn is actually what got me into watching Glee in the first place. Finn just seems to trust Will above a lot of the other people he knows. When he found out about Quinn's pregnancy, who was the first person he ran to, Will. He felt like Will was the only one he could talk to about it. Then Will takes Quinn and Finn to the doctor, what teacher does that for their student. In the pilot, Finn just seems almost mesmerized by Will.”

(And who wouldn’t be mesmerized by Will? If he was MY foreign language teacher, my grade would be so much better than it is now. Plus Matthew Morrison? My biggest crush on Broadway EVER, he’s just fantastic. Not just in Hairspray. Go and check out The Light in the Piazza. He sings in ITALIAN. A-freakin'-mazing)

starryskies acknowledges that while Winn will never be canon, and that’s okay. She points out that “there’s an almost painfully obvious connection between them.” She also goes on to say: “Yeah, maybe Will and Emma are meant to be together, the same way that Finn and Rachel are supposed to be together (oh look, their plots once again mirror each other!). And we know that there’s going to be a very rocky road ahead for both of those couples, and we don’t know what the future will bring. But no matter what, Will and Finn will remain connected. It’s an important foundational element of the show. Finn wouldn’t still be in Glee Club if it wasn’t for Will’s encouragement, and then Glee Club would have to break up because it wouldn’t have enough members (or be very good). And then there’d be no show.”

                So as Winn fans, we’re saying that while imagining a romantic relationship between them would be nice. It wouldn’t be fundamental to the show.  

There are two scenes that stand out to be the biggest beacon of OBVIOUISNESS to the average Winn shipper.

Scene A: The shower scene from the pilot is one of the most important to the fandom. Girls and guys and those in-between drool over the sight of Cory Monteith singing ‘Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore’ in the locker room shower. Then you see Will standing there just listening to his voice. Realizing that this kid has got some serious talent and igniting that spark of belief in the teenager that he can be something so SO much better than anything else that he could imagine. It’s what really gets the glee club into gear. It’s the catalyst of the parallels between the two. This is the scene where the show really gets started.

(Also the Winn fans stand by that he totally took a peek. And hey go check out that shower scene and tell me with a straight face that you wouldn’t. Go on! I’ll wait. So…? Yeah I thought so.)

 

                Scene B: When Finn finds out that Quinn is pregnant in ‘Preggers’ (Episode 4, Season 1) and mistakenly is led to believe the kid is his; he goes to Will. He doesn’t tell his best friend or his mom or anyone else that you could possibly tell in this situation. No, he tells Will. This shows a deep connection between the two. That Finn trusts Will with something so personal shows that he is not scared that Will would judge him. Then there’s a really touching moment where Finn just breaks down into tears and has a hug with Will, which is heart-wrenching and amazing. Besides the part where they are pressed up against each other, there is an emotional vulnerability. The mere connection in that moment between the two is sweet and simple, but wrought with subtext.

However, it’s not just those two big scenes which endear the pairing to us. As starryskies told me as she was editing this piece: “Every episode contains Winn. Seriously, I checked. It’s as if the writer’s have a list of things they absolutely have to have in every episode: ‘Well, Mercedes better get a line, Tina too, and where’s our moment with Will and Finn together?”

So she compiled me a list, many of the moments I had in notes that I took preparing to write this. I will mention some of the less well known but still Winn filled moments.

In the episode “Showmance” (season 1, episode 2), the Glee club sings “Gold Digger” by Kanye West with Will filling in for the rap part. He dances around most of the students but seems to be particularly focused on Finn. Also when Finn does not have the right beat, Will begins to move his leg for him to “help him keep tempo”. (Uh-huh sure Will that’s what they’re calling it these days)

 In “Wheels” (season 1, episode 9), Finn and Puck have a fight in the hall way. Now who will break up this fight? You’ll never guess! It’s Will!

 In “Ballad” (season 1, episode 10), Finn teases Will in order for him to sing with Rachel. There’s something about the teasing that hints to a not ordinary student/teacher relationship.

 In “Throwdown” (season 1, episode 7), Will drive Finn and Quinn to the baby’s ultrasound. What teacher DOES that? Will Schuester apparently, he did it because Finn was ‘too freaked out to drive’.

 Now there are three pretty big episodes for the Winn fan (besides the pilot and “Preggers”), they are as follows:

1) “Acafellas” (season 1, episode 3): When Rachel insists that Will is not helping the Glee club further their routines, Finn is the only one that stands up for him. Actually when Will leaves Glee for his new accapella group, Finn tells him that glee ‘isn’t fun’ without him there. Finn is also incredibly flattered when Will asks him to join. Even going as far as thanking Will for believing in him (as Will fixes Finn’s bowtie). There’s an emotional connection suggested between the two in this episode that goes on for the rest of season. This episode cements the pairing.

2) “Mash-Up” (season 1, episode 8): Finn chooses football over glee when forced. Will goes to talk to Finn. The quarterback tells Will that he doesn’t understand. Will responds with the single most awesome lines in existence for a Winn fan: Of all the students I’ve ever had, you’re the one who reminds me the most of me. Oh. My. God. This is the writers shoving the pairing down our throats! It was amazingly cute and sweet! A fantastic moment to add to the Winn supporters argument!

3) “Sectionals” (season 1, episode 13): Due to some obscure rule, Will cannot go to Sectionals with the kids after events in the previous episode. Finn cannot go because he found out about his best friend being the baby daddy to his girlfriend. When Finn finds out, Quinn gets Will to break it up. Then when Will realizes WHY there was fighting he gives Puck and Quinn a look that could melt the skin off of your face. Then Sue Sylvester was a total bitch and gave the set list to the other schools. So Will finds Finn in the locker room. Then there is some bonding between the two over the similar situations (both betrayed by the women they trusted). Will tells Finn “You can’t always get what you want” before handing the keys to his car to Finn. The song Finn saves the day with? “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones. These writers have some awesome powers of being subtle. 

Reader: Alright HopeNight, you make a good case. But why is this pairing your OTP?

 Again! Good question, Reader!

 I started off in this fandom mucking around. I was searching for a pairing that I could both read and write with enjoyment. I tried Puck/Kurt but while I enjoyed reading it, I found that I could not write Puck over long increments of time. Then I decided to swap out for Finn/Kurt. I actually got a fic out which I wrote easily using Finn as the main point of focus for the narration. I found that I liked writing the football star and could do it with relative ease. However, my Kurt seemed lacking to me and I love him to bits so I didn’t want to ruin him for myself by my writing.

 So there I was at my wit’s end, ready to throw in the towel and give femmeslash a shot when I saw a tag for a Will/Finn pairing. Curious, I clicked and read then promptly squealed like a pre-teen about to meet the Jo-Bros for about a good three minutes. I then began to pound out my own Winn fic.

 And I loved it. I was happy with the voice, the tempo, how the characterization went and just how naturally writing them together seemed to be for me. I loved making them nervous but happy with their relationship finding a balance between lovers and teacher/student. It was fun to write and fun to read. I also got to do a fairly decent Puck without freaking out over it.

 But what draws me the most to Winn is the nature of the fics. Will and Finn both are laid-back, easy-going guys with kindness to spare. They care about others around them. Translating that into a stable, happy relationship where both parties are satisfied: emotionally, mentally, and physically is not a stretch with these two. Most Winn fics show the two legitimately concerned with each other’s well being and not their own gain.

This is why I ship Winn.

Reader: Fine! You win! I’m sold or at least tempted to give this a look see. Now give me some recs, woman!

 Oh well I’m glad that you asked! :D

 Unfortunately, Winn needs more writers! So hopefully I’ll get a few of you to at least try your hand at one. Good news is that there are good Winn fics out there! And here they are.

 (I would like to apologize because I am about to self pimp in addition to reccing. Sadly since there is such a small but dedicated base for this pairing. I am hoping this expands it. We need you Winn writers! Please?)

 Communities:

winnners

 

Fics: 

Anything Written by starryskies/gleeful_beat 
Why: She rocks that's why. The stories that get written are beautitful and heartbreaking and all about falling in love.

No Uptown Fool (Or Six Times Will's Eyes Wandered) by plasticenposes
Why: Oh Will! This was written right after the pilot aired. But everything stays true to the characters. Will’s nervousness and Finn’s playful seduction that has become a staple in nearly all the Winn fic out there makes its debut in this sweetly touching fic.

An Intriguing Phenomenon by orange_rotted
Why: It has an almost whimsical quality to the story. It’s one of those fics where it’s so good but hard to explain. The tone reminds me of a fairy tale like quality even though a fairy-tale it is not. It’s just simple, sweet, and beautiful.

 The Teen!Will Verse by hopenight (a.k.a. me)
Why: Someone told me that it’s the magic that draws them. It’s an AU but still fits in with the story. Also it shows the pair in a warm relationship.

And that's it! Thanks for reading! Say bye Glee cast!