I Despise That I Adore You
Title: I Despise That I Adore You
Author: domfangirl
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Puck/Santana, with appearances by Brittany, Mercedes, and Kurt; implied Puck/everyone else, Santana/everyone else. (Those two get around, ya know.)
Warnings: Spoilers for all of S1. Dialogue lifted from 1x18 "Laryngitis."
Word count: ~8100
Summary: Puck and Santana have many meetings of bodies and minds...and finally, possibly one of the heart.
Author’s Notes: Fic title from the Rihanna/Ne-Yo song "Hate That I Love You." Many thanks to my beta, becca_radcgg, you are a GODDESS, as always. *blows kisses* I wrote this for the Hot Summer Nights Exchange at gleefics. This was my first time writing Puck/Santana, and now I ship them a bit. The original posting of the fic is HERE. This was one of the most satisfying fics to write because I had no expectations--my recipient dropped out before the posting even began, so all the pressure was off for me, and it ended up being one of my most thoroughly reviewed stories ever. So, thank you, HOT SUMMER NIGHTS EXCHANGE! *g*
Additional A/N: I have decided to dedicate this story to delicathessa who did a pinch hit for the exchange. She is just a lovely person all around who didn't have a story specifically written for her.
Santana watches him watching her.
Fuck.
She should have known.
She tried pinning him down after she punched his v-card over Christmas break during their freshman year, but he had been hesitant to be exclusive. (I dig you, San, but I’mma little young to settle down, don’cha think? he asked, winking.)
Then, magically over the summer, he showed up at her house, all boyfriend-like and they'd been together ever since-almost three months now. She knows it won't last forever because it’s high school, and Santana’s been around the block a few times.
He’s starting to figure out that he can get a lot of ass with that smile, and those eyes, and-god-his hands.
It just pisses her off that he has a thing for Quinn Fabray. What a fucking cliché.
She ponders the banality of the hot jock jonesing for the blonde head cheerleader and suddenly realizes Quinn and Finn's relationship started just a week or two before hers did.
God. It's even lamer than she first thought.
"I need a good reason to break up with Puck," she says to Brittany one day as they're sipping milkshakes at the Dairy Queen.
"Is he a bad boyfriend?" Brittany asks.
"Kinda," Santana says, not elaborating. With Britt, she doesn't have to.
"Is this because I had sex with him?"
Santana's spine stiffens. "When did you have sex with him?"
"Over spring break," Brittany says, folding a napkin into a crane.
Santana narrows her eyes. "No, it's okay. Besides, you're my girl," she says bumping her shoulder against Britt's. "Just don't do it again, alright?"
"If you're breaking up with him, why do you care?"
Santana smiles. "Because I might not want him anymore, but that doesn't mean I want anyone else to have him."
Brittany giggles. "Excellent." She pauses, noisily sucking up the last of her milkshake. "Check his credit score. If it's less than 700, dump him."
Santana holds her pinky up for Brittany to loop hers through it. "Good idea, Britt."
~*~
With his hand against the back of her neck, he keeps her face down on the table. Her fingers grip at the edges of it, her knuckles white, and the sound she makes in her throat nearly ends him. He closes his eyes and slows his movements, and she gasps his name desperately.
It makes him forget for just a moment that he controls nothing, not even this really, because she could have said no. Even though Santana never says no, tonight he hadn't been so sure. He thought maybe, like everything else lately, he would have to beg and plead, and he still wouldn't get anything the way he wanted-needed-it. Not to mention, they broke up weeks ago.
(Quinn is pregnant with his baby and nobody knows it.)
He doesn’t want to think about it, although it's worked to pull him back from the brink. He refocuses, looking down at the light brown curves of her ass as they peek out from under her hiked-up Cheerios skirt. She likes having sex almost fully clothed, and while he prefers naked bodies and plenty of skin, he's pretty sure she'll give him another round the way he wants it later.
God, she makes him hot, and she lets him do practically anything, even though he's not her boyfriend anymore. It doesn't get much better than this.
"Puck, please," she whispers, and so he starts moving harder, his thrusts still rhythmically purposeful, though quicker. He can feel the burn start at the base of his balls, and he mutters, "Gonna-ung," and she keens, her ass grinding against him with a little swivel of her hips. The shivers of her orgasm around his cock are mind-numbingly awesome when they start, and she moans loudly, the sound so fucking erotic that if he wasn’t right there already it would have pushed him over. He thrusts one last time and spills himself, grateful for condoms in that he won't have to clean up afterwards.
He can only imagine his mother's horror if she knew he'd done this on their kitchen table.
Santana picks up her red spanx from the floor a moment later and gives him a smile as she walks into the living room. He suspects she wouldn't be so smug if she knew the truth.
~*~
"You were babysitting with Quinn? That's why you didn't come over to my house?" She pouts her lips at him, but inside she's seething. Who the hell does he think he is?
"You know how it is, babe. You don't want to mess with a pregnant chick. She needed help, and Finn wasn't around. So I stepped up." He gives her a look, like this is the kind of thing he does, he's just that kind of guy.
Except he's Puck and that's so not true. She narrows her eyes at him and he starts to squirm right in front of her. He reaches out, trailing a finger up her arm. "But you know how hard it is to dirty talk with a hot chick like you and then play Cowboys and Indians with a bunch of six year olds? Now that's multi-tasking."
She grins at him like that's the sexiest thing she's ever heard. Really, it's like the stupidest. Santana's not an idiot, and she never believed for a second that Finn had knocked up Quinn. (Frigid ice queen meets biggest virgin ever? Sure.) She'd been there the day Puck had wrestled Finn out of his wheelchair in the hallway. If she hadn't suspected before then, she would have known for sure after that.
(She would also bet her tanning privileges that Quinn can't even get off, no matter how drunk he'd probably gotten her or how good Puck is in bed.)
But, seriously. Does he really think she hasn't already figured out that's his kid in there, and that Quinn got pregnant before she and Brittany ran the FICO on him?
She lets it go like it's no big deal. (Because it's not. It was just babysitting. So '90s.)
Later, after her chat with Quinn, she can see he's unhappy, and she's glad.
It's not like she'll ever get an apology out of him, but maybe that will teach him a lesson.
~*~
After Finn storms out of the choir room, Puck looks around. Everyone has varying degrees of devastation etched on their faces-Quinn's being the worst, with Rachel a close second. He figures the rest of them are much more worried about Sectionals than they are Finn, and then his eyes meet Santana's.
She smirks at him, then slings her arm through Brittany's and walks out.
It hits him like a linebacker in the end zone. She knew. The whole time, possibly from the first smoke screen he'd thrown up when he'd told everyone that Quinn was pregnant to begin with. He should have realized she wouldn't have been fooled.
He should have anticipated she might use it against him if she got pissed about something.
~*~
"What the hell, San?" he yells.
"I didn't tell anyone. You heard Rachel, you know it was her!"
He stands in the middle of her bedroom, his chest heaving agitatedly and she can't imagine why, like Artie, Puck would ever think she'd blow the secret. It didn't do her any good status-wise to expose it, and she sure as fuck didn't want anyone to think she cared.
(Because she totally doesn't.)
He grabs her arm and jerks her off the bed, where she had been laying, listening to music, when he barged into her house. Her mom's out Christmas shopping and her dad just left to pick up her brother from his piano lesson. "If my dad knew you were going to come up here and assault me, he would never have let you in!" She pulls back against his grasp and he looks even angrier, as though something has rapidly changed during the few minutes he's been in her room.
Understanding blindsides her, and she punches his shoulder, hard, to drive it home. "You got yourself into this. Don't blame me. That's what you get for screwing around on me."
She doesn't mean to say it, and his expression goes blank momentarily until he catches up with her accusation. He drops her gaze for a just a fraction of a second, and she knows that's all the guilt she's gonna squeeze out of him. So she says the next thing that comes to mind: "You want to keep the baby, don't you?"
His eyes snap back to hers, and he doesn't answer, he just tips his head slightly and this asinine sentimentality comes over his face. "You'll never get to. There's no way she'll keep it. You better make peace with that, Puck."
He shoves her back when she spits that out, his hands flat and wide against her shoulders. The knob nails her in the middle of her back as he pushes her up against the door, and she actually feels sorry for him, which makes her even madder.
(She's been mad ever since he stood in the choir room and all he did was yell at Finn. He never once got angry at Quinn, whose fault this entire mess was, obviously.)
His mouth covers hers, and the desperation she tastes on his tongue has her clawing at his clothes, shoving his t-shirt up and jerking his zipper down hard enough that he lets out a yelp of pain. She gets him so hot so fast that he's inside her without a condom within five minutes (not that that matters with her, she's on the pill and she can go to Planned Parenthood tomorrow for Plan B, too). It becomes a battle, each of them trying to make the other one lose it first, and Santana loves this, the push and pull, the way it becomes a war of minds as well as bodies. He comes first, but with a flick of his thumb over her clit, she follows right after him. They're both panting like dogs in heat, but her eyes seek the clock as his head drops down on her shoulder. He's been in her house all of fourteen minutes.
It's good that they were fast, because her dad gets back a few minutes after that and when he checks on them, Puck's sitting on the floor at the foot her bed while she's laying on her stomach behind him. (They're watching Knocked Up because Santana can't help herself.)
Later, they lay on her bed together, not talking, but not fooling around either. He falls to sleep, but she just watches him. She doesn't have to wonder why Quinn would have his baby, but not tell anyone the truth. (She knows Quinn's an idiot who is moronically controlled by her parents and thinks a perfect life with perfect Finn is the right answer.)
(Quinn is wrong.)
~*~
"I mean, it's just a mohawk, right?" he asks, looking at her for reassurance. "I'm still Pucksaurus."
Santana tilts her head and looks at him derisively. "Actually, I don't know if it's the missing mohawk, or the whining, but I'm totally not turned on by you right now."
She swivels away from him and gets up, leaving him alone in the choir room. This is not the way things are supposed to be. Santana's his girl, like Finn used to be his boy. They were always number one with each other, even when, you know, one of them was de-virginizing the Captain of the Cheerios (dude, he knows she was pissed about that back then, but she's over it now), or the Captain of the Football Team (he had been a little pissed when he heard about that. He didn't like sharing Santana with Finn any better than he did Quinn).
They, like, supported each other, or whatever.
Santana always had his back. At least up until today. He had to find a way to raise his status without any help from her, not even a pep talk.
Damn his mother and her skin cancer paranoia. And damn the dermatologist and his obviously bad eyesight. They were all trying to ruin his life.
~*~
She really loves it when he gets an idea, because his presentations in Glee Club are always hilarious. And he's a good singer. And, you know, he does make her hot. She thought she was over it a couple days ago when he lost his mohawk, but as he dances across the choir room singing "Lady is a Tramp" she can't help but laugh.
He thinks he's so tough, but he's sort of an adorable dork. (He joined a Black church? What the hell for?)
Not that she'd ever say that aloud. But still, he is. And she is turned on, even though he doesn't have the mohawk anymore.
Then she realizes he's singing to Mercedes of all people and that possessive streak of hers flames up dangerously high. Why does he always sing to chicks who will never put out?
It really pisses Santana off. Brittany's never been sung to. Quinn, who is, like, eight months pregnant with his spawn, has never been sung to. Santana, who's up for just about anything any time as far as he's concerned, has never been sung to.
But all the perfect little unpopular girls who would never give it up get special treatment. It's just not right. When he pulls Mercedes out onto the floor with him, Santana boils with a rage similar to what she felt when she found out he went babysitting with Quinn months ago.
She's gonna have to handle this one differently than the "Sweet Caroline" incident, though. Getting Dave Karofsky to slushie Puck hadn't been hard at all. That guy didn't even want payment (which was good, because there had been no way in hell she was putting out for that douchebag.)
She's not sure what she'll do, but she's not targeting Puck this time. She had to go straight for the problem, and the problem's not Puck.
~*~
He enjoys every second of it; watching Santana and Mercedes "musically" fighting over him is pretty much the coolest thing he's ever witnessed. It's only after the song ends and Santana issues the warning, "Enjoy it while you can, Wheezy. His hair's already starting to grow back," that he realizes how much better it would have been if the whole school had seen it, and not just the twelve geeks in Glee Club.
(He can count on Hummel to tell the whole damn school, so maybe it'll turn up on Ben-Israel's blog.)
He wouldn't need hair ever again if everyone knew that chicks were fighting over him while he had another one knocked up in the corner.
Then again, Santana might stop his play forever if given the right format. He smiles at Mercedes and offers to carry her books since Santana's gone already anyway, and there's no chance of an out and out catfight in the choir room. "That was hot, Momma," he says. She plants a kiss on his cheek as she hefts her books into his arms.
~*~
When the sext from Puck comes in (hey babe, u goin commando 2nite?) Santana is at home, alone, doing homework. Her father is out of town on business and her mother is at her younger brother's Spring League soccer match.
Normally, she'd send him back something (true or not) that would give him an instant boner, and then she'd invite him over.
Not today. Mercedes had turned in her Cheerios uniform after school. When Brittany tried to warn her about what she might face in Coach Sylvester's office, she just shrugged and said something about needing to be true to herself. Santana grabbed her arm and asked, "What about Puck?"
"What about him?"
"If you're not a Cheerio, he's not gonna be up on that," she explained, rolling her eyes.
"Then you can have him and his dumpster-tossing-idiocy. He's sexy and all, but, Santana, he's a jackass."
She watched Mercedes walk into the coach's office and then she turned to look at Brittany. "Your plan is totally working," Brittany said, smiling widely. "You're making it so no one wants him." It always struck Santana as strange what Britt chose to remember. Months ago her motivation had been started by the way Puck looked at Quinn (little did she know then just what those looks had meant), but now? Now what was the point of calling girls off of him?
Laying on her bed, looking at her cell phone's small screen, Santana finds herself wondering about all of it. Not the obvious stuff: of course Puck is a jackass. That's his thing. What had bothered her about Mercedes' exit were the words true to myself.
Santana has no idea what it's like to be true to herself. She's only ever thought about what could get her to the top of the heap (Cheerios, Popularity, Making It So Puck Had No Place To Go But Her). She ignores the text message, and flips her phone shut.
He's only calling because he's single again. She doesn't like it.
~*~
Even though pissing girls off is his specialty (second only to making them cream all over him, natch), Santana clocking him broadside after he's removed his KISS platforms is a surprise.
From his position on the floor (hey, she sucker punched him!) he's reminded yet again (from that attention grabber in the front of his pants) that she's one hella hot chick who he's banged on a regular basis for the last year and a half. He really doesn't know (or care) what her problem is; dealing with Quinn's crap every damn day makes it hard to want to put up with any other girl's batshit craziness.
Mercedes had been a welcome change of scenery because she just wanted him to shut it a little and get her coffee drinks, but that had lasted for all of three days, and he's pretty sure that's Santana's fault. (No proof, just the odds of her intimidation being the reason Mercedes quit the Cheerios seems pretty fucking high to him.)
He reaches out as she starts to step over his prone body, and grabs her ankle. It's not hard to yank her off her feet because she's wearing crazy-ass stilettos (fucking hot) with her Lady Gaga costume. (That's what started this whole thing-she looks amazing and his dick totally noticed, so he made a comment. And then she punched him. In the face. The fuck?)
As she lands on top of him, he realizes he didn't think that through very well because she all but jams her elbow right into his stomach and her knee collides with his boys. He grunts in pain and hears her mutter, "You fucking asshole."
Just another day, really, nothing new to see here. Artie wheels by without comment and Quinn rolls her eyes as she follows behind him.
They're left alone in the large closet off the choir room that holds the props, costumes, and various piles of sheet music. Puck literally can't move because he's been kneed in the groin (not on purpose, which is a good thing because if she'd meant to do it, he'd probably be puking his guts up right about now), so he just lays there. Santana's head comes up as she scrambles to get off of him, but she freezes when their eyes meet.
"What?" he asks.
"You're bleeding," she says, and her eyes drift to the corner of his mouth.
His hand flies to his bottom lip. Sure as shit, it comes away stained with white face paint and blood, and he figures this is as bad as it gets. His ex-girlfriend sucker punched him and fucking made him bleed when even Finn hadn't broken any skin when he'd gone all apeshit on Puck's ass. A week ago he was dumpster diving and today he's been beat up by a girl.
Granted, Santana's the meanest girl he knows, but still. If this gets around, he'll need a lot more than a mohawk to get any true fear out of anyone ever again. (His throbbing lip finally captures his attention and he's surprised he didn't notice it sooner.) "Fuck," he breathes, thumping his head back against the floor.
"Come on," she says. "Let's clean you up."
San, being San, takes him to the boys’ restroom. (He remembers Rachel taking him to the girls' when he got slushied. It was nicer in there, and smelled much better.) He doesn't dwell on this unfortunate circumstance too long through, because did he mention? Her Lady Gaga outfit is seriously distracting. All lacy and skin tight, and her ass keeps making his hands itch.
She pushes him to sit down on the boiler (that hasn't been on for a several weeks as the spring weather settled in) and then pulls out some towelette thingies. She starts wiping his face, pulling away tons of white and black make-up and then dabbing at his split lip gently.
He hooks his legs around hers, pulling her between his knees. (She left her heels in the prop room along with his wig and the weird headgear she'd been wearing.) She's pretty close to him anyway, but he could stand for her to be closer, and he ought to get something more than just a fat lip out of this. He keeps his hands to himself though, because he's a little afraid of her. She's been different lately, really ever since he dated Mercedes. He's noticed, sure, but he doesn't know what to make of it. All he knows is he wants his fuck buddy back.
That's what he's always liked about her-he never knows what to expect beforehand, but he can always count on the sex afterwards. She'd been his first (something nobody knew, and Santana actually held it quietly to herself for some unknown reason), and he had a soft spot for her because of it.
"You need a shower to really get this stuff off," she says, swiping a towelette over his forehead. "I think the warm water will steam what's left loose."
"Your parents home?" he asks, raising an eyebrow at her and catching her eye.
She just stares at him, annoyance evident in her expression. "You're not coming home with me."
"Why not?" he asks, holding her firmly with his legs when she tries to move away from him. She swivels her pelvis and throws the wadded up pile of used towelettes at the garbage can. She sinks it, no problem. "Two points," he says automatically. "Come on, San, we haven't hooked up in a while. Don't you miss me?" He smiles his sex shark smile and starts to stretch a hand up to touch the lace of her shirt. So what if he's going for a nipple at the same time?
She smacks his hand away. "No," she says and then she digs her fingers into his kneecap so he yowls and lets her go.
By the time he gets his feet under him and the pain in his knee recedes enough to follow her, she's already out the door.
He hobbles over to the mirror and looks at his fat lip. Pucksaurus, Puckzilla, Puckerone, they all seem to have left the building. The only person staring back at him from that mirror is Noah Puckerman, a guy wearing too much make-up, who's got sore balls, and no prospects in sight.
~*~
Santana's not sure why she's so angry. He isn't doing anything different than he ever has; she's always liked it just like this.
No strings attached. She could hook up with whoever she wanted, though the truth of the matter is that she rarely did that. When she had an itch, she called Puck. Sometimes if she had too much to drink, she hooked up with Britt. It was just something they did; there was comfort in it, and Santana didn't read too much into it. She loved Brittany; it was just an extension of the acceptance she felt there.
The occasional other hook up (Finn, Matt, Mike) had all been for a purpose (power, fun, experiment-Britt said Mike was bendy, so you know, she had to find out just how).
It's not like she likes Puck. (Well, maybe she likes him.) But she's not in love with him or anything.
When they'd been rehearsing and figuring out the parts for "Bad Romance" Kurt had looked right at her. "You sing this part, Santana," he said, handing her sheet music highlighted with orange neon. "Sing it like it destroys you, like you want it more than anything, like you'd kill whoever it was that stood between you and whoever you want."
Then he demonstrated: "I want your love and I want your revenge, I want your love, I don't wanna be friends. WANT YOUR BAD ROMANCE!"
She'd gotten chills; they all had. When she sang it alone in her bathroom the night before their performance, she wondered if Kurt thought about Finn when he sang it. It's no secret, everybody knows Hummel wants Hudson, and it's never gonna happen.
"The Boy is Mine" had been a power play. Mercedes, and all those girls, needed to know that Puck was off limits. Quinn is the only one she'd approve of, and that's only because of the baby. (She knows that shit matters to Puck. She can respect that.)
"Bad Romance" hadn't been a message to anyone. The boys didn't even get it anyway; Gaga was some kind of foreign nation that they couldn't enter.
She hadn't been singing to Puck. She didn't want him. She just didn't want anyone else to have him.
~*~
Puck goes home and takes a shower, as advised. After he's make-up free, he puts on clean underwear and sacks out on his bed. He sends her a sext (have mercy, san, u looked like sin on a stick 2day. I gotta stick 4 u bb) and hopes for a flaming hot reply.
Usually, he can get her worked up this way (and she works him up right back) and then they meet up and get it out of their systems. It's been what works for them, ever since they broke up (for a lame ass reason he tries to never think about).
Lately, though, she's never available, or she's just not interested, which is kinda scary for Puck. Santana's his go-to girl. She's never let him down, except for breaking up with him that one time. But really it ended up being better; seemed like she liked him better when they weren't "together."
Sometimes he misses her though. She's like his buddy, or whatever. (Second only to Finn, who he also misses.) She's the only girl who ever played Mario with him (and didn't roll her eyes when he explained why it was the best of the Mario games), and she's the only girl who understands how important the hierarchy at WMHS is. She isn't worried about being a better person and she doesn't think Glee is life-changing or some shit like that. (But she liked it just as much as he did, though neither of them really wanted to cop to that.)
She's the only one, who, like, knows what's real.
(She's the only one who ever said a truth he would later learn directly from Quinn's mouth. There's no way she'll keep it. You better make peace with that, Puck. He still hopes Quinn might change her mind when she sees the baby, but those odds get smaller every day, especially when she gets mad at him for trying to name their daughter. Whatever. Jackie Daniels is cool.)
When his phone remains irritatingly silent, he tries again. (san, srsly. i miss u. come over.)
He gives up a few minutes later, tosses his phone aside, and gets off the bed. Grabbing a pair of board shorts, he pulls them on and heads downstairs. His mom's on late shift, and on school nights when she has to work she sends Bekah to his grandma's (because one time he took his sister to the Zoo in Dayton instead of going to school like he was supposed to. It wasn't that she hadn't appreciated that he took Bekah on a trip like that; she just wished he'd do it on a Saturday. Yeah, right. Like he'd give up a Saturday for that).
After he gets a bottle of beer from the fridge (his mom doesn't say anything if he kifes one once in a while), he goes back upstairs and sees that he missed a message.
be over in 20. don't fing make me regret this.
He has no idea what that means, but he quickly straightens up his room, sweeping cookie crumbs off his sheets and pulling the covers up so that the bed is made. He thinks about putting on a shirt, but then decides against it. If he's half naked when she gets here, his odds go up. There's gotta be some statistic that supports that, even if he doesn't have the number in front of him.
~*~
Puck's house is an old two-story on the east side of Lima. It's an old neighborhood-a lot of Jews live there actually-and Santana has always liked it. There's something kinda sweet about his mom's rose bushes out front and the green trim on the white A-frame. It's just different than her house, one that was built five years ago and looks too pristine.
Puck's house has character. Not that she'd ever say that out loud, but there has always been something about it that made her love going there.
It didn't have anything to do with him, of course. She could take him or leave him, and she did, on a regular basis. Sometimes they fucked on his bed, or on the sofa in the living room (or once on the kitchen table-that had been hot). Sometimes they just played video games or watched movies. She'd even babysat Bekah with him a time or two (which was why she'd been pissed when she heard he was babysitting with Quinn, but it turned out they weren't hanging out with his sister, they'd been with some other kids. Some relation to Mr. Schue.)
Sometimes they didn't talk for weeks at a time. Sometimes he called her; sometimes she called him. They never said no to each other, is the point. It's weird that part of her wants to say no. She never says no. She also turned him down the last few times he's texted her.
She's not stupid. She realizes she's mad at him, for a real reason. But just like with the whole Quinn thing, she knows it's unwise to show her cards.
She knocks on the door and he opens it wearing nothing but a pair of board shorts and she rolls her eyes. "Subtle," she mocks, fighting the smile that wants to answer his lecherous grin.
"It's hot," he says. "Summer's comin'," he adds, gesturing for her to come inside.
He pushes the door shut and reaches out to her, his fingers sliding over her t-shirt at the small of her back. "Sorta hoped you'd still be wearing your Gaga costume."
"Sorry to disappoint you," she says, walking further into the living room and breaking the contact between them. She flings herself down on the couch. "Your mom's at work?"
"Yep."
"You're such a douche," she mutters as he sits down next to her.
"What's your problem?" he asks, his eyes skidding sharply across her face. "First you punch me when I fucking compliment you, and now you're here, what for? To call me names? If I was into that, I'd just hang out with Quinn." He offers her his beer and she takes it with no hesitation.
Santana glances around. "Speaking of, where is she? I thought she lived here?"
"She's over at Mercedes'. Apparently they're BFFs now."
At the mention of Mercedes, Santana's irritation flares again.
"She's pissed because I want to name the baby Jackie Daniels," he adds as Santana's taking a sip of beer. She chokes, covering her mouth with her free hand to keep it from spraying out.
Coughing a little, she says, "Well, that is pretty stupid," and he flips her off and then grabs the beer back. She notices lines on his face; little marks of stress around his mouth and across his forehead. She knows Puck's face as well as her own, and she suddenly realizes that all this has been harder on him than he acknowledges. (Of course he wouldn't wear his heart on his sleeve or anything, but she just hadn't thought about it much. She figured he'd made peace with the whole adoption thing by now.)
"Whatever, nobody appreciates the rock and roll Puckerone style." He tips the bottle up to his lips and takes a long swallow. When he finishes, he wipes a hand over his mouth, and puts the bottle down on the coffee table. She watches the transition on his face as he shoves away thoughts of Quinn and the baby. Then he looks at her hopefully. "You came over for a reason, right? And it wasn't to talk about baby names."
The way he can make her feel sorry for him pisses her off. The whole thing pisses her off-pissed her off from the start-Quinn, Puck stepping out on her, Rachel, Mercedes, him never saying one word to her about that song she and Mercedes had performed. He just ignores whatever he doesn't want to deal with and expects her to have sex with him.
He only wants one thing from her. In the past, that's all she'd wanted too, but something weird is happening to her. Now it's all mixed up in her head.
She moves suddenly, turning so she can swing her leg over his. Once she's seated on his lap, she grabs his face and kisses him, hard. Mashing her lips over his, she knows she's caught him by surprise because his response time is a bit delayed. By the time he's trying to return her kiss, she's sinking her teeth into his bottom lip meanly and he hisses at her, his hands gripping at her hips reflexively.
He jerks his head back and all but whispers, "Come on, San, be nice. I'm fuckin' dyin' here."
"No, you're not," she says lowly. "You just don't wanna work for it." She rocks her hips forward and feels him hardening under her. "You just want me to lay back, spread 'em, and pretend to get off when you do so that one thing in your life is easy."
He just stares at her after that, his hazel eyes drifting over her face, from her lips to her eyes and back again. He draws one hand up and cups her cheek, pulling her close so that when he speaks, she can feel the puff of his breath on her mouth. "When have I ever left you hanging?" he asks, and she can see she's actually insulted him. "I'm pretty sure if we did comparisons, you've gotten off way more than I have."
That part is at least true. He might suck at everything else, but he's never let her get him off without a reciprocal orgasm, or three.
Now, he presses a kiss to her mouth, keeping his eyes open and on hers as he does so, tracing her bottom lip lightly with his tongue. "If I can't get any guarantees from you, what am I supposed to do? You chase off other girls who might put out."
"Mercedes Jones was never gonna put out for you," she says scathingly, pulling her head back so their lips can't touch.
His hand slips to the back of her neck, holding her firmly in front of him. "Duh," he mutters. "I didn't want her that way. It was all for show, and you know it. I don't know why you got so territorial. Not that I didn't think that was fucking hot, by the way. But totally unnecessary."
If she wasn't straddling him, she would so kick him in the 'nads right now. As it is, she scoots back just slightly and puts her hand over his crotch. He winces as her nails dig into the fabric over him. "Hey," he says warningly.
"You're such a prick," she breathes, closing her eyes. Some inexplicable sadness overwhelms her. She doesn't want to be here, like this, but this is the only way she knows how to be.
He tugs her closer, but she just lets her body go loose. She stops squeezing his package and then slides away from him. She's surprised when he just lets her. She rests against his side; his arm sort of holds her there, but not forcefully.
Her eyes pop open when he says, "I don't think she's gonna let me be there, you know. When the baby comes." She turns her head towards him, and he somehow looks even more pathetic. She doesn't think he's trying to look as sad as he does, and that's why it grabs at her heart.
"She said you can't come?" she asks.
He shrugs. "She didn't say I could."
"Well, ask her. Tell her you wanna be there. It's not that hard."
His eyes slide over to her and he doesn't have to say, "Harder than you think," but he does and Santana seriously wants to beat him bloody. (Or maybe she wants to beat the shit out of herself. At this point it's hard to tell who she loathes more between the two of them.) His bottom lip is a little swollen from her earlier hit, a punch she'd thrown completely spontaneously. He'd whispered "You're such a cocktease in that outfit," and she'd just reacted, her fist landing accurately on his dirty mouth.
She has no control of her emotions anymore. No methodical plans, no course of action, nothing to keep him in line, by whatever means necessary. Whatever he does, she just feels something, and it spills out.
What was it Mr. Schue had said? Find your voice. She'd found it all right, and it's like she can't shut it up now.
He sighs and says, "You can go. I know you don't wanna be here."
It's like everything goes completely still. There they sit, and he's going through all this shit and just wants to get laid to forget about it, and she's having this epiphany that must have something to do with singing about her emotions.
That's what pisses her off. She does want to be here.
It's always been deeper for her, all along. It's not something she's okay with because she doesn't want to get hurt. She doesn't want him to have power over her, but that's just the thing. With Puck, he's not trying to overpower her. He just needs her. He wants her. He doesn't love her, and he doesn't pretend to.
(She does love him, and she's been pretending she doesn't.)
She leans into him, pressing her lips to his jaw, along the column of his neck, against the softness of his earlobe. She worms her hand under the elastic waistband of his shorts and coaxes his burgeoning erection into a full hard-on. He gasps and arches under her and his hand comes up to grab at her head, pulling her mouth to his. "San..." he whispers.
She wants sweet and gentle, and maybe that's even what he needs, but she fights against that instinct. "Fuck me," she commands, her voice strong.
He gets harder in her hand, and then he's dragging her off the sofa, up the stairs to his bedroom. He tosses her on his bed, stripping her t-shirt and shorts off. His hands rush over her body, squeezing roughly and then cupping tightly, pulling her against him and then pushing her back so he can get his mouth on her breasts.
The heat pulses under her skin, and over her body, his lips and tongue igniting fires that his fingers cool only to stoke up again until she's writhing under him. Her nails rake over his shoulders in an attempt to get him to move faster, harder, to do what she told him to do.
Fuck me.
His mouth moves over her navel, drifting over the small patch of hair below it and then his fingers are inside her ("Oh, god, so wet, baby," he groans) and it feels like she's yelling at him to just do it. Words gather and choke in her throat and she hears him whisper, "Steady, San, I'm here," and then he bends the two fingers he's got inside her, and she arches, her back bowing up off his small bed. She must curse him, because she feels him laughing, the chuckles bouncing off the incredibly sensitive and exposed parts of her body. He leans down further, his mouth touching her, his tongue arrowing in against her clitoris until the combination of his fingers inside her and his mouth over her makes her entire body seize up.
She feels boneless in the aftermath. She has no time to even think though because his mouth is on hers again, his lips open and wide. His kisses are deep and drugging to the point that she doesn't want oxygen anymore, just him, just this, the way it is right now.
Because this time is different.
She wraps her arms around him so that the smooth skin of his back is under her fingertips. He moves up so he's lying between her legs, and together they manage to get his shorts and underwear off. The searing heat of his body sweeps over hers as his erection rubs against the moisture there and she lifts her knees to make more room for him. His eyes find hers and he nudges the head of his cock into her. He doesn't push to enter her all the way, though, even when she arches under him and wraps one leg around his hip. Holding back, he seems content to just kiss her some more, but softer, his tongue rasping lightly over the tip of hers.
She gets a sudden fear that he's going to say something-something that will ruin it, so she presses her lips more firmly to his, rocking her hips, taking him a little deeper herself. But he doesn't say anything. He just keeps his eyes on hers as he slowly-agonizingly-pushes inside her, and for the first time they have sex together. They aren't one-upping the other, and his rhythm invites her to move with him, like a dance, like the way they sometimes have to learn to move harmoniously for Glee.
He comes, but she doesn't, and it doesn't occur to either of them to mind.
~*~
"You wanna sleep over?" he asks. They’re spooning on his bed because that’s really the only way to lie there comfortably if there's two people. (Stupid twin bed.)
She makes a noise in her throat and he peers over her shoulder to see that she’s mostly asleep. It’s not that late now, but he’d rather know if he needs to set his alarm a little earlier to get her out of the house before his mom gets home from work. He’s sleepy too-good sex gets him every time-but he’s afraid to let himself go.
He doesn’t want to wake up to a lecture from his mother about the "inappropriateness and absurdity" of a girl sleeping over. (Like she doesn’t know he has sex; he’s not even 17 yet, and he’s got a baby momma.) Then he thinks about Quinn, and he almost wants to take back the invitation, because if Quinn comes home before school in the morning, he’s so screwed.
They didn’t use a condom, so the bedding needs to be washed. (San’s on the pill, he knows, but it’s still pretty stupid. He was kinda caught up in the moment though, and that’s literally his only excuse, other than just being a fucking moron sometimes.)
"Can’t," she murmurs, her eyes opening and her head turning to look at him. "But I told my parents I’d be late, so let me rest a little, would ya?"
He kisses her just because he wants to and murmurs, "Bummer."
He is disappointed. Relieved, but disappointed. (Weird.)
He drifts then, snuggling his face into her shoulder, holding her body tight against his. She’s warm and soft, and there’s this relaxation in her form that only happens to people when they are really comfortable. He likes that she’s so chill with him. He likes that she came over, that she was there for him. It makes him feel like the world order’s been restored a little bit or something.
When he wakes up some time later, it’s because she’s kissing his face-first his eyes, then his cheeks, then his nose, and finally his mouth. He opens his eyes and looks at her, but she’s already dressed again, and he glances at the clock. It’s almost midnight.
He touches her face regretfully. "Shouldna wasted time sleepin’," he slurs, still not quite awake. He doesn’t want her to go, but he knows he can’t coax her into staying; it would be bad news for both of them.
"If you want Quinn to let you be there when the baby’s born, you should sing to her."
His eyes open all the way and his brain kicks on, the cobwebs of drowsiness wafting away as he looks at her. "What?" he asks.
"I’m serious. Just sing her a song. Girls love that shit." She gives him a look, like he knows that already, and yeah, he totally does, but it seems like a odd piece of advice for Santana to give him. "Not something like ‘Lady is a Tramp,’ though. Something better. Something about a baby, preferably."
She pushes herself off the bed and finds the band he’d pulled from her hair earlier. She scoops her hair up into a ponytail, and secures it high on the back of her head. She looks down at him. "Can you think of something?"
He nods. A song from the KISS songbook came instantly to mind, one that he and the guys had practiced before they decided that “Shout It Out Loud” was more fun. "Yeah. You’re right. I shoulda thought of that before." He sits up, scooting to the side of the bed. He grabs her hand. "Thanks, San."
She just stares down at him, a little smile on her lips. He’s not sure why she’s being so nice, but something inside him tells him he can trust it.
He can trust her. He always has, so that’s another strange thought. This whole day was just weird, all the way around.
He pulls her closer so she’s standing between his knees. She’s fully clothed, and he’s totally naked, but he feels like she just exposed herself a little. “You know what song I’d sing to you?” he asks, grinning up at her.
She lifts an eyebrow and gives him a look that says he better have a good answer for his own question (especially since he’s sitting there buck naked). "Schue would never let me do it, but," and hoping he can hit the note, he clears his throat once or twice before he sings, "She's a brick….house. She’s migh-ty migh-ty, just lettin' it all hang out-" he cuts himself off when she starts laughing and shoves her hand against his shoulder.
She leans down and presses her lips to his. "I appreciate the sentiment," she says against his mouth. "Really." She rubs her hand over his mohawk-less scalp affectionately. "I’ll see you tomorrow."
~*~
The next day, Santana holds up her faux lighter while Puck and the other guys sing to Quinn. She thinks maybe being true to yourself just means being honest with yourself. There’s a smile on her face that feels real, and when Quinn tearfully nods her head at Puck’s request, she’s glad.
There are battles ahead of her, she’s sure of it. At least now she knows what she’s fighting for.
Author: domfangirl
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Puck/Santana, with appearances by Brittany, Mercedes, and Kurt; implied Puck/everyone else, Santana/everyone else. (Those two get around, ya know.)
Warnings: Spoilers for all of S1. Dialogue lifted from 1x18 "Laryngitis."
Word count: ~8100
Summary: Puck and Santana have many meetings of bodies and minds...and finally, possibly one of the heart.
Author’s Notes: Fic title from the Rihanna/Ne-Yo song "Hate That I Love You." Many thanks to my beta, becca_radcgg, you are a GODDESS, as always. *blows kisses* I wrote this for the Hot Summer Nights Exchange at gleefics. This was my first time writing Puck/Santana, and now I ship them a bit. The original posting of the fic is HERE. This was one of the most satisfying fics to write because I had no expectations--my recipient dropped out before the posting even began, so all the pressure was off for me, and it ended up being one of my most thoroughly reviewed stories ever. So, thank you, HOT SUMMER NIGHTS EXCHANGE! *g*
Additional A/N: I have decided to dedicate this story to delicathessa who did a pinch hit for the exchange. She is just a lovely person all around who didn't have a story specifically written for her.
Santana watches him watching her.
Fuck.
She should have known.
She tried pinning him down after she punched his v-card over Christmas break during their freshman year, but he had been hesitant to be exclusive. (I dig you, San, but I’mma little young to settle down, don’cha think? he asked, winking.)
Then, magically over the summer, he showed up at her house, all boyfriend-like and they'd been together ever since-almost three months now. She knows it won't last forever because it’s high school, and Santana’s been around the block a few times.
He’s starting to figure out that he can get a lot of ass with that smile, and those eyes, and-god-his hands.
It just pisses her off that he has a thing for Quinn Fabray. What a fucking cliché.
She ponders the banality of the hot jock jonesing for the blonde head cheerleader and suddenly realizes Quinn and Finn's relationship started just a week or two before hers did.
God. It's even lamer than she first thought.
"I need a good reason to break up with Puck," she says to Brittany one day as they're sipping milkshakes at the Dairy Queen.
"Is he a bad boyfriend?" Brittany asks.
"Kinda," Santana says, not elaborating. With Britt, she doesn't have to.
"Is this because I had sex with him?"
Santana's spine stiffens. "When did you have sex with him?"
"Over spring break," Brittany says, folding a napkin into a crane.
Santana narrows her eyes. "No, it's okay. Besides, you're my girl," she says bumping her shoulder against Britt's. "Just don't do it again, alright?"
"If you're breaking up with him, why do you care?"
Santana smiles. "Because I might not want him anymore, but that doesn't mean I want anyone else to have him."
Brittany giggles. "Excellent." She pauses, noisily sucking up the last of her milkshake. "Check his credit score. If it's less than 700, dump him."
Santana holds her pinky up for Brittany to loop hers through it. "Good idea, Britt."
~*~
With his hand against the back of her neck, he keeps her face down on the table. Her fingers grip at the edges of it, her knuckles white, and the sound she makes in her throat nearly ends him. He closes his eyes and slows his movements, and she gasps his name desperately.
It makes him forget for just a moment that he controls nothing, not even this really, because she could have said no. Even though Santana never says no, tonight he hadn't been so sure. He thought maybe, like everything else lately, he would have to beg and plead, and he still wouldn't get anything the way he wanted-needed-it. Not to mention, they broke up weeks ago.
(Quinn is pregnant with his baby and nobody knows it.)
He doesn’t want to think about it, although it's worked to pull him back from the brink. He refocuses, looking down at the light brown curves of her ass as they peek out from under her hiked-up Cheerios skirt. She likes having sex almost fully clothed, and while he prefers naked bodies and plenty of skin, he's pretty sure she'll give him another round the way he wants it later.
God, she makes him hot, and she lets him do practically anything, even though he's not her boyfriend anymore. It doesn't get much better than this.
"Puck, please," she whispers, and so he starts moving harder, his thrusts still rhythmically purposeful, though quicker. He can feel the burn start at the base of his balls, and he mutters, "Gonna-ung," and she keens, her ass grinding against him with a little swivel of her hips. The shivers of her orgasm around his cock are mind-numbingly awesome when they start, and she moans loudly, the sound so fucking erotic that if he wasn’t right there already it would have pushed him over. He thrusts one last time and spills himself, grateful for condoms in that he won't have to clean up afterwards.
He can only imagine his mother's horror if she knew he'd done this on their kitchen table.
Santana picks up her red spanx from the floor a moment later and gives him a smile as she walks into the living room. He suspects she wouldn't be so smug if she knew the truth.
~*~
"You were babysitting with Quinn? That's why you didn't come over to my house?" She pouts her lips at him, but inside she's seething. Who the hell does he think he is?
"You know how it is, babe. You don't want to mess with a pregnant chick. She needed help, and Finn wasn't around. So I stepped up." He gives her a look, like this is the kind of thing he does, he's just that kind of guy.
Except he's Puck and that's so not true. She narrows her eyes at him and he starts to squirm right in front of her. He reaches out, trailing a finger up her arm. "But you know how hard it is to dirty talk with a hot chick like you and then play Cowboys and Indians with a bunch of six year olds? Now that's multi-tasking."
She grins at him like that's the sexiest thing she's ever heard. Really, it's like the stupidest. Santana's not an idiot, and she never believed for a second that Finn had knocked up Quinn. (Frigid ice queen meets biggest virgin ever? Sure.) She'd been there the day Puck had wrestled Finn out of his wheelchair in the hallway. If she hadn't suspected before then, she would have known for sure after that.
(She would also bet her tanning privileges that Quinn can't even get off, no matter how drunk he'd probably gotten her or how good Puck is in bed.)
But, seriously. Does he really think she hasn't already figured out that's his kid in there, and that Quinn got pregnant before she and Brittany ran the FICO on him?
She lets it go like it's no big deal. (Because it's not. It was just babysitting. So '90s.)
Later, after her chat with Quinn, she can see he's unhappy, and she's glad.
It's not like she'll ever get an apology out of him, but maybe that will teach him a lesson.
~*~
After Finn storms out of the choir room, Puck looks around. Everyone has varying degrees of devastation etched on their faces-Quinn's being the worst, with Rachel a close second. He figures the rest of them are much more worried about Sectionals than they are Finn, and then his eyes meet Santana's.
She smirks at him, then slings her arm through Brittany's and walks out.
It hits him like a linebacker in the end zone. She knew. The whole time, possibly from the first smoke screen he'd thrown up when he'd told everyone that Quinn was pregnant to begin with. He should have realized she wouldn't have been fooled.
He should have anticipated she might use it against him if she got pissed about something.
~*~
"What the hell, San?" he yells.
"I didn't tell anyone. You heard Rachel, you know it was her!"
He stands in the middle of her bedroom, his chest heaving agitatedly and she can't imagine why, like Artie, Puck would ever think she'd blow the secret. It didn't do her any good status-wise to expose it, and she sure as fuck didn't want anyone to think she cared.
(Because she totally doesn't.)
He grabs her arm and jerks her off the bed, where she had been laying, listening to music, when he barged into her house. Her mom's out Christmas shopping and her dad just left to pick up her brother from his piano lesson. "If my dad knew you were going to come up here and assault me, he would never have let you in!" She pulls back against his grasp and he looks even angrier, as though something has rapidly changed during the few minutes he's been in her room.
Understanding blindsides her, and she punches his shoulder, hard, to drive it home. "You got yourself into this. Don't blame me. That's what you get for screwing around on me."
She doesn't mean to say it, and his expression goes blank momentarily until he catches up with her accusation. He drops her gaze for a just a fraction of a second, and she knows that's all the guilt she's gonna squeeze out of him. So she says the next thing that comes to mind: "You want to keep the baby, don't you?"
His eyes snap back to hers, and he doesn't answer, he just tips his head slightly and this asinine sentimentality comes over his face. "You'll never get to. There's no way she'll keep it. You better make peace with that, Puck."
He shoves her back when she spits that out, his hands flat and wide against her shoulders. The knob nails her in the middle of her back as he pushes her up against the door, and she actually feels sorry for him, which makes her even madder.
(She's been mad ever since he stood in the choir room and all he did was yell at Finn. He never once got angry at Quinn, whose fault this entire mess was, obviously.)
His mouth covers hers, and the desperation she tastes on his tongue has her clawing at his clothes, shoving his t-shirt up and jerking his zipper down hard enough that he lets out a yelp of pain. She gets him so hot so fast that he's inside her without a condom within five minutes (not that that matters with her, she's on the pill and she can go to Planned Parenthood tomorrow for Plan B, too). It becomes a battle, each of them trying to make the other one lose it first, and Santana loves this, the push and pull, the way it becomes a war of minds as well as bodies. He comes first, but with a flick of his thumb over her clit, she follows right after him. They're both panting like dogs in heat, but her eyes seek the clock as his head drops down on her shoulder. He's been in her house all of fourteen minutes.
It's good that they were fast, because her dad gets back a few minutes after that and when he checks on them, Puck's sitting on the floor at the foot her bed while she's laying on her stomach behind him. (They're watching Knocked Up because Santana can't help herself.)
Later, they lay on her bed together, not talking, but not fooling around either. He falls to sleep, but she just watches him. She doesn't have to wonder why Quinn would have his baby, but not tell anyone the truth. (She knows Quinn's an idiot who is moronically controlled by her parents and thinks a perfect life with perfect Finn is the right answer.)
(Quinn is wrong.)
~*~
"I mean, it's just a mohawk, right?" he asks, looking at her for reassurance. "I'm still Pucksaurus."
Santana tilts her head and looks at him derisively. "Actually, I don't know if it's the missing mohawk, or the whining, but I'm totally not turned on by you right now."
She swivels away from him and gets up, leaving him alone in the choir room. This is not the way things are supposed to be. Santana's his girl, like Finn used to be his boy. They were always number one with each other, even when, you know, one of them was de-virginizing the Captain of the Cheerios (dude, he knows she was pissed about that back then, but she's over it now), or the Captain of the Football Team (he had been a little pissed when he heard about that. He didn't like sharing Santana with Finn any better than he did Quinn).
They, like, supported each other, or whatever.
Santana always had his back. At least up until today. He had to find a way to raise his status without any help from her, not even a pep talk.
Damn his mother and her skin cancer paranoia. And damn the dermatologist and his obviously bad eyesight. They were all trying to ruin his life.
~*~
She really loves it when he gets an idea, because his presentations in Glee Club are always hilarious. And he's a good singer. And, you know, he does make her hot. She thought she was over it a couple days ago when he lost his mohawk, but as he dances across the choir room singing "Lady is a Tramp" she can't help but laugh.
He thinks he's so tough, but he's sort of an adorable dork. (He joined a Black church? What the hell for?)
Not that she'd ever say that aloud. But still, he is. And she is turned on, even though he doesn't have the mohawk anymore.
Then she realizes he's singing to Mercedes of all people and that possessive streak of hers flames up dangerously high. Why does he always sing to chicks who will never put out?
It really pisses Santana off. Brittany's never been sung to. Quinn, who is, like, eight months pregnant with his spawn, has never been sung to. Santana, who's up for just about anything any time as far as he's concerned, has never been sung to.
But all the perfect little unpopular girls who would never give it up get special treatment. It's just not right. When he pulls Mercedes out onto the floor with him, Santana boils with a rage similar to what she felt when she found out he went babysitting with Quinn months ago.
She's gonna have to handle this one differently than the "Sweet Caroline" incident, though. Getting Dave Karofsky to slushie Puck hadn't been hard at all. That guy didn't even want payment (which was good, because there had been no way in hell she was putting out for that douchebag.)
She's not sure what she'll do, but she's not targeting Puck this time. She had to go straight for the problem, and the problem's not Puck.
~*~
He enjoys every second of it; watching Santana and Mercedes "musically" fighting over him is pretty much the coolest thing he's ever witnessed. It's only after the song ends and Santana issues the warning, "Enjoy it while you can, Wheezy. His hair's already starting to grow back," that he realizes how much better it would have been if the whole school had seen it, and not just the twelve geeks in Glee Club.
(He can count on Hummel to tell the whole damn school, so maybe it'll turn up on Ben-Israel's blog.)
He wouldn't need hair ever again if everyone knew that chicks were fighting over him while he had another one knocked up in the corner.
Then again, Santana might stop his play forever if given the right format. He smiles at Mercedes and offers to carry her books since Santana's gone already anyway, and there's no chance of an out and out catfight in the choir room. "That was hot, Momma," he says. She plants a kiss on his cheek as she hefts her books into his arms.
~*~
When the sext from Puck comes in (hey babe, u goin commando 2nite?) Santana is at home, alone, doing homework. Her father is out of town on business and her mother is at her younger brother's Spring League soccer match.
Normally, she'd send him back something (true or not) that would give him an instant boner, and then she'd invite him over.
Not today. Mercedes had turned in her Cheerios uniform after school. When Brittany tried to warn her about what she might face in Coach Sylvester's office, she just shrugged and said something about needing to be true to herself. Santana grabbed her arm and asked, "What about Puck?"
"What about him?"
"If you're not a Cheerio, he's not gonna be up on that," she explained, rolling her eyes.
"Then you can have him and his dumpster-tossing-idiocy. He's sexy and all, but, Santana, he's a jackass."
She watched Mercedes walk into the coach's office and then she turned to look at Brittany. "Your plan is totally working," Brittany said, smiling widely. "You're making it so no one wants him." It always struck Santana as strange what Britt chose to remember. Months ago her motivation had been started by the way Puck looked at Quinn (little did she know then just what those looks had meant), but now? Now what was the point of calling girls off of him?
Laying on her bed, looking at her cell phone's small screen, Santana finds herself wondering about all of it. Not the obvious stuff: of course Puck is a jackass. That's his thing. What had bothered her about Mercedes' exit were the words true to myself.
Santana has no idea what it's like to be true to herself. She's only ever thought about what could get her to the top of the heap (Cheerios, Popularity, Making It So Puck Had No Place To Go But Her). She ignores the text message, and flips her phone shut.
He's only calling because he's single again. She doesn't like it.
~*~
Even though pissing girls off is his specialty (second only to making them cream all over him, natch), Santana clocking him broadside after he's removed his KISS platforms is a surprise.
From his position on the floor (hey, she sucker punched him!) he's reminded yet again (from that attention grabber in the front of his pants) that she's one hella hot chick who he's banged on a regular basis for the last year and a half. He really doesn't know (or care) what her problem is; dealing with Quinn's crap every damn day makes it hard to want to put up with any other girl's batshit craziness.
Mercedes had been a welcome change of scenery because she just wanted him to shut it a little and get her coffee drinks, but that had lasted for all of three days, and he's pretty sure that's Santana's fault. (No proof, just the odds of her intimidation being the reason Mercedes quit the Cheerios seems pretty fucking high to him.)
He reaches out as she starts to step over his prone body, and grabs her ankle. It's not hard to yank her off her feet because she's wearing crazy-ass stilettos (fucking hot) with her Lady Gaga costume. (That's what started this whole thing-she looks amazing and his dick totally noticed, so he made a comment. And then she punched him. In the face. The fuck?)
As she lands on top of him, he realizes he didn't think that through very well because she all but jams her elbow right into his stomach and her knee collides with his boys. He grunts in pain and hears her mutter, "You fucking asshole."
Just another day, really, nothing new to see here. Artie wheels by without comment and Quinn rolls her eyes as she follows behind him.
They're left alone in the large closet off the choir room that holds the props, costumes, and various piles of sheet music. Puck literally can't move because he's been kneed in the groin (not on purpose, which is a good thing because if she'd meant to do it, he'd probably be puking his guts up right about now), so he just lays there. Santana's head comes up as she scrambles to get off of him, but she freezes when their eyes meet.
"What?" he asks.
"You're bleeding," she says, and her eyes drift to the corner of his mouth.
His hand flies to his bottom lip. Sure as shit, it comes away stained with white face paint and blood, and he figures this is as bad as it gets. His ex-girlfriend sucker punched him and fucking made him bleed when even Finn hadn't broken any skin when he'd gone all apeshit on Puck's ass. A week ago he was dumpster diving and today he's been beat up by a girl.
Granted, Santana's the meanest girl he knows, but still. If this gets around, he'll need a lot more than a mohawk to get any true fear out of anyone ever again. (His throbbing lip finally captures his attention and he's surprised he didn't notice it sooner.) "Fuck," he breathes, thumping his head back against the floor.
"Come on," she says. "Let's clean you up."
San, being San, takes him to the boys’ restroom. (He remembers Rachel taking him to the girls' when he got slushied. It was nicer in there, and smelled much better.) He doesn't dwell on this unfortunate circumstance too long through, because did he mention? Her Lady Gaga outfit is seriously distracting. All lacy and skin tight, and her ass keeps making his hands itch.
She pushes him to sit down on the boiler (that hasn't been on for a several weeks as the spring weather settled in) and then pulls out some towelette thingies. She starts wiping his face, pulling away tons of white and black make-up and then dabbing at his split lip gently.
He hooks his legs around hers, pulling her between his knees. (She left her heels in the prop room along with his wig and the weird headgear she'd been wearing.) She's pretty close to him anyway, but he could stand for her to be closer, and he ought to get something more than just a fat lip out of this. He keeps his hands to himself though, because he's a little afraid of her. She's been different lately, really ever since he dated Mercedes. He's noticed, sure, but he doesn't know what to make of it. All he knows is he wants his fuck buddy back.
That's what he's always liked about her-he never knows what to expect beforehand, but he can always count on the sex afterwards. She'd been his first (something nobody knew, and Santana actually held it quietly to herself for some unknown reason), and he had a soft spot for her because of it.
"You need a shower to really get this stuff off," she says, swiping a towelette over his forehead. "I think the warm water will steam what's left loose."
"Your parents home?" he asks, raising an eyebrow at her and catching her eye.
She just stares at him, annoyance evident in her expression. "You're not coming home with me."
"Why not?" he asks, holding her firmly with his legs when she tries to move away from him. She swivels her pelvis and throws the wadded up pile of used towelettes at the garbage can. She sinks it, no problem. "Two points," he says automatically. "Come on, San, we haven't hooked up in a while. Don't you miss me?" He smiles his sex shark smile and starts to stretch a hand up to touch the lace of her shirt. So what if he's going for a nipple at the same time?
She smacks his hand away. "No," she says and then she digs her fingers into his kneecap so he yowls and lets her go.
By the time he gets his feet under him and the pain in his knee recedes enough to follow her, she's already out the door.
He hobbles over to the mirror and looks at his fat lip. Pucksaurus, Puckzilla, Puckerone, they all seem to have left the building. The only person staring back at him from that mirror is Noah Puckerman, a guy wearing too much make-up, who's got sore balls, and no prospects in sight.
~*~
Santana's not sure why she's so angry. He isn't doing anything different than he ever has; she's always liked it just like this.
No strings attached. She could hook up with whoever she wanted, though the truth of the matter is that she rarely did that. When she had an itch, she called Puck. Sometimes if she had too much to drink, she hooked up with Britt. It was just something they did; there was comfort in it, and Santana didn't read too much into it. She loved Brittany; it was just an extension of the acceptance she felt there.
The occasional other hook up (Finn, Matt, Mike) had all been for a purpose (power, fun, experiment-Britt said Mike was bendy, so you know, she had to find out just how).
It's not like she likes Puck. (Well, maybe she likes him.) But she's not in love with him or anything.
When they'd been rehearsing and figuring out the parts for "Bad Romance" Kurt had looked right at her. "You sing this part, Santana," he said, handing her sheet music highlighted with orange neon. "Sing it like it destroys you, like you want it more than anything, like you'd kill whoever it was that stood between you and whoever you want."
Then he demonstrated: "I want your love and I want your revenge, I want your love, I don't wanna be friends. WANT YOUR BAD ROMANCE!"
She'd gotten chills; they all had. When she sang it alone in her bathroom the night before their performance, she wondered if Kurt thought about Finn when he sang it. It's no secret, everybody knows Hummel wants Hudson, and it's never gonna happen.
"The Boy is Mine" had been a power play. Mercedes, and all those girls, needed to know that Puck was off limits. Quinn is the only one she'd approve of, and that's only because of the baby. (She knows that shit matters to Puck. She can respect that.)
"Bad Romance" hadn't been a message to anyone. The boys didn't even get it anyway; Gaga was some kind of foreign nation that they couldn't enter.
She hadn't been singing to Puck. She didn't want him. She just didn't want anyone else to have him.
~*~
Puck goes home and takes a shower, as advised. After he's make-up free, he puts on clean underwear and sacks out on his bed. He sends her a sext (have mercy, san, u looked like sin on a stick 2day. I gotta stick 4 u bb) and hopes for a flaming hot reply.
Usually, he can get her worked up this way (and she works him up right back) and then they meet up and get it out of their systems. It's been what works for them, ever since they broke up (for a lame ass reason he tries to never think about).
Lately, though, she's never available, or she's just not interested, which is kinda scary for Puck. Santana's his go-to girl. She's never let him down, except for breaking up with him that one time. But really it ended up being better; seemed like she liked him better when they weren't "together."
Sometimes he misses her though. She's like his buddy, or whatever. (Second only to Finn, who he also misses.) She's the only girl who ever played Mario with him (and didn't roll her eyes when he explained why it was the best of the Mario games), and she's the only girl who understands how important the hierarchy at WMHS is. She isn't worried about being a better person and she doesn't think Glee is life-changing or some shit like that. (But she liked it just as much as he did, though neither of them really wanted to cop to that.)
She's the only one, who, like, knows what's real.
(She's the only one who ever said a truth he would later learn directly from Quinn's mouth. There's no way she'll keep it. You better make peace with that, Puck. He still hopes Quinn might change her mind when she sees the baby, but those odds get smaller every day, especially when she gets mad at him for trying to name their daughter. Whatever. Jackie Daniels is cool.)
When his phone remains irritatingly silent, he tries again. (san, srsly. i miss u. come over.)
He gives up a few minutes later, tosses his phone aside, and gets off the bed. Grabbing a pair of board shorts, he pulls them on and heads downstairs. His mom's on late shift, and on school nights when she has to work she sends Bekah to his grandma's (because one time he took his sister to the Zoo in Dayton instead of going to school like he was supposed to. It wasn't that she hadn't appreciated that he took Bekah on a trip like that; she just wished he'd do it on a Saturday. Yeah, right. Like he'd give up a Saturday for that).
After he gets a bottle of beer from the fridge (his mom doesn't say anything if he kifes one once in a while), he goes back upstairs and sees that he missed a message.
be over in 20. don't fing make me regret this.
He has no idea what that means, but he quickly straightens up his room, sweeping cookie crumbs off his sheets and pulling the covers up so that the bed is made. He thinks about putting on a shirt, but then decides against it. If he's half naked when she gets here, his odds go up. There's gotta be some statistic that supports that, even if he doesn't have the number in front of him.
~*~
Puck's house is an old two-story on the east side of Lima. It's an old neighborhood-a lot of Jews live there actually-and Santana has always liked it. There's something kinda sweet about his mom's rose bushes out front and the green trim on the white A-frame. It's just different than her house, one that was built five years ago and looks too pristine.
Puck's house has character. Not that she'd ever say that out loud, but there has always been something about it that made her love going there.
It didn't have anything to do with him, of course. She could take him or leave him, and she did, on a regular basis. Sometimes they fucked on his bed, or on the sofa in the living room (or once on the kitchen table-that had been hot). Sometimes they just played video games or watched movies. She'd even babysat Bekah with him a time or two (which was why she'd been pissed when she heard he was babysitting with Quinn, but it turned out they weren't hanging out with his sister, they'd been with some other kids. Some relation to Mr. Schue.)
Sometimes they didn't talk for weeks at a time. Sometimes he called her; sometimes she called him. They never said no to each other, is the point. It's weird that part of her wants to say no. She never says no. She also turned him down the last few times he's texted her.
She's not stupid. She realizes she's mad at him, for a real reason. But just like with the whole Quinn thing, she knows it's unwise to show her cards.
She knocks on the door and he opens it wearing nothing but a pair of board shorts and she rolls her eyes. "Subtle," she mocks, fighting the smile that wants to answer his lecherous grin.
"It's hot," he says. "Summer's comin'," he adds, gesturing for her to come inside.
He pushes the door shut and reaches out to her, his fingers sliding over her t-shirt at the small of her back. "Sorta hoped you'd still be wearing your Gaga costume."
"Sorry to disappoint you," she says, walking further into the living room and breaking the contact between them. She flings herself down on the couch. "Your mom's at work?"
"Yep."
"You're such a douche," she mutters as he sits down next to her.
"What's your problem?" he asks, his eyes skidding sharply across her face. "First you punch me when I fucking compliment you, and now you're here, what for? To call me names? If I was into that, I'd just hang out with Quinn." He offers her his beer and she takes it with no hesitation.
Santana glances around. "Speaking of, where is she? I thought she lived here?"
"She's over at Mercedes'. Apparently they're BFFs now."
At the mention of Mercedes, Santana's irritation flares again.
"She's pissed because I want to name the baby Jackie Daniels," he adds as Santana's taking a sip of beer. She chokes, covering her mouth with her free hand to keep it from spraying out.
Coughing a little, she says, "Well, that is pretty stupid," and he flips her off and then grabs the beer back. She notices lines on his face; little marks of stress around his mouth and across his forehead. She knows Puck's face as well as her own, and she suddenly realizes that all this has been harder on him than he acknowledges. (Of course he wouldn't wear his heart on his sleeve or anything, but she just hadn't thought about it much. She figured he'd made peace with the whole adoption thing by now.)
"Whatever, nobody appreciates the rock and roll Puckerone style." He tips the bottle up to his lips and takes a long swallow. When he finishes, he wipes a hand over his mouth, and puts the bottle down on the coffee table. She watches the transition on his face as he shoves away thoughts of Quinn and the baby. Then he looks at her hopefully. "You came over for a reason, right? And it wasn't to talk about baby names."
The way he can make her feel sorry for him pisses her off. The whole thing pisses her off-pissed her off from the start-Quinn, Puck stepping out on her, Rachel, Mercedes, him never saying one word to her about that song she and Mercedes had performed. He just ignores whatever he doesn't want to deal with and expects her to have sex with him.
He only wants one thing from her. In the past, that's all she'd wanted too, but something weird is happening to her. Now it's all mixed up in her head.
She moves suddenly, turning so she can swing her leg over his. Once she's seated on his lap, she grabs his face and kisses him, hard. Mashing her lips over his, she knows she's caught him by surprise because his response time is a bit delayed. By the time he's trying to return her kiss, she's sinking her teeth into his bottom lip meanly and he hisses at her, his hands gripping at her hips reflexively.
He jerks his head back and all but whispers, "Come on, San, be nice. I'm fuckin' dyin' here."
"No, you're not," she says lowly. "You just don't wanna work for it." She rocks her hips forward and feels him hardening under her. "You just want me to lay back, spread 'em, and pretend to get off when you do so that one thing in your life is easy."
He just stares at her after that, his hazel eyes drifting over her face, from her lips to her eyes and back again. He draws one hand up and cups her cheek, pulling her close so that when he speaks, she can feel the puff of his breath on her mouth. "When have I ever left you hanging?" he asks, and she can see she's actually insulted him. "I'm pretty sure if we did comparisons, you've gotten off way more than I have."
That part is at least true. He might suck at everything else, but he's never let her get him off without a reciprocal orgasm, or three.
Now, he presses a kiss to her mouth, keeping his eyes open and on hers as he does so, tracing her bottom lip lightly with his tongue. "If I can't get any guarantees from you, what am I supposed to do? You chase off other girls who might put out."
"Mercedes Jones was never gonna put out for you," she says scathingly, pulling her head back so their lips can't touch.
His hand slips to the back of her neck, holding her firmly in front of him. "Duh," he mutters. "I didn't want her that way. It was all for show, and you know it. I don't know why you got so territorial. Not that I didn't think that was fucking hot, by the way. But totally unnecessary."
If she wasn't straddling him, she would so kick him in the 'nads right now. As it is, she scoots back just slightly and puts her hand over his crotch. He winces as her nails dig into the fabric over him. "Hey," he says warningly.
"You're such a prick," she breathes, closing her eyes. Some inexplicable sadness overwhelms her. She doesn't want to be here, like this, but this is the only way she knows how to be.
He tugs her closer, but she just lets her body go loose. She stops squeezing his package and then slides away from him. She's surprised when he just lets her. She rests against his side; his arm sort of holds her there, but not forcefully.
Her eyes pop open when he says, "I don't think she's gonna let me be there, you know. When the baby comes." She turns her head towards him, and he somehow looks even more pathetic. She doesn't think he's trying to look as sad as he does, and that's why it grabs at her heart.
"She said you can't come?" she asks.
He shrugs. "She didn't say I could."
"Well, ask her. Tell her you wanna be there. It's not that hard."
His eyes slide over to her and he doesn't have to say, "Harder than you think," but he does and Santana seriously wants to beat him bloody. (Or maybe she wants to beat the shit out of herself. At this point it's hard to tell who she loathes more between the two of them.) His bottom lip is a little swollen from her earlier hit, a punch she'd thrown completely spontaneously. He'd whispered "You're such a cocktease in that outfit," and she'd just reacted, her fist landing accurately on his dirty mouth.
She has no control of her emotions anymore. No methodical plans, no course of action, nothing to keep him in line, by whatever means necessary. Whatever he does, she just feels something, and it spills out.
What was it Mr. Schue had said? Find your voice. She'd found it all right, and it's like she can't shut it up now.
He sighs and says, "You can go. I know you don't wanna be here."
It's like everything goes completely still. There they sit, and he's going through all this shit and just wants to get laid to forget about it, and she's having this epiphany that must have something to do with singing about her emotions.
That's what pisses her off. She does want to be here.
It's always been deeper for her, all along. It's not something she's okay with because she doesn't want to get hurt. She doesn't want him to have power over her, but that's just the thing. With Puck, he's not trying to overpower her. He just needs her. He wants her. He doesn't love her, and he doesn't pretend to.
(She does love him, and she's been pretending she doesn't.)
She leans into him, pressing her lips to his jaw, along the column of his neck, against the softness of his earlobe. She worms her hand under the elastic waistband of his shorts and coaxes his burgeoning erection into a full hard-on. He gasps and arches under her and his hand comes up to grab at her head, pulling her mouth to his. "San..." he whispers.
She wants sweet and gentle, and maybe that's even what he needs, but she fights against that instinct. "Fuck me," she commands, her voice strong.
He gets harder in her hand, and then he's dragging her off the sofa, up the stairs to his bedroom. He tosses her on his bed, stripping her t-shirt and shorts off. His hands rush over her body, squeezing roughly and then cupping tightly, pulling her against him and then pushing her back so he can get his mouth on her breasts.
The heat pulses under her skin, and over her body, his lips and tongue igniting fires that his fingers cool only to stoke up again until she's writhing under him. Her nails rake over his shoulders in an attempt to get him to move faster, harder, to do what she told him to do.
Fuck me.
His mouth moves over her navel, drifting over the small patch of hair below it and then his fingers are inside her ("Oh, god, so wet, baby," he groans) and it feels like she's yelling at him to just do it. Words gather and choke in her throat and she hears him whisper, "Steady, San, I'm here," and then he bends the two fingers he's got inside her, and she arches, her back bowing up off his small bed. She must curse him, because she feels him laughing, the chuckles bouncing off the incredibly sensitive and exposed parts of her body. He leans down further, his mouth touching her, his tongue arrowing in against her clitoris until the combination of his fingers inside her and his mouth over her makes her entire body seize up.
She feels boneless in the aftermath. She has no time to even think though because his mouth is on hers again, his lips open and wide. His kisses are deep and drugging to the point that she doesn't want oxygen anymore, just him, just this, the way it is right now.
Because this time is different.
She wraps her arms around him so that the smooth skin of his back is under her fingertips. He moves up so he's lying between her legs, and together they manage to get his shorts and underwear off. The searing heat of his body sweeps over hers as his erection rubs against the moisture there and she lifts her knees to make more room for him. His eyes find hers and he nudges the head of his cock into her. He doesn't push to enter her all the way, though, even when she arches under him and wraps one leg around his hip. Holding back, he seems content to just kiss her some more, but softer, his tongue rasping lightly over the tip of hers.
She gets a sudden fear that he's going to say something-something that will ruin it, so she presses her lips more firmly to his, rocking her hips, taking him a little deeper herself. But he doesn't say anything. He just keeps his eyes on hers as he slowly-agonizingly-pushes inside her, and for the first time they have sex together. They aren't one-upping the other, and his rhythm invites her to move with him, like a dance, like the way they sometimes have to learn to move harmoniously for Glee.
He comes, but she doesn't, and it doesn't occur to either of them to mind.
~*~
"You wanna sleep over?" he asks. They’re spooning on his bed because that’s really the only way to lie there comfortably if there's two people. (Stupid twin bed.)
She makes a noise in her throat and he peers over her shoulder to see that she’s mostly asleep. It’s not that late now, but he’d rather know if he needs to set his alarm a little earlier to get her out of the house before his mom gets home from work. He’s sleepy too-good sex gets him every time-but he’s afraid to let himself go.
He doesn’t want to wake up to a lecture from his mother about the "inappropriateness and absurdity" of a girl sleeping over. (Like she doesn’t know he has sex; he’s not even 17 yet, and he’s got a baby momma.) Then he thinks about Quinn, and he almost wants to take back the invitation, because if Quinn comes home before school in the morning, he’s so screwed.
They didn’t use a condom, so the bedding needs to be washed. (San’s on the pill, he knows, but it’s still pretty stupid. He was kinda caught up in the moment though, and that’s literally his only excuse, other than just being a fucking moron sometimes.)
"Can’t," she murmurs, her eyes opening and her head turning to look at him. "But I told my parents I’d be late, so let me rest a little, would ya?"
He kisses her just because he wants to and murmurs, "Bummer."
He is disappointed. Relieved, but disappointed. (Weird.)
He drifts then, snuggling his face into her shoulder, holding her body tight against his. She’s warm and soft, and there’s this relaxation in her form that only happens to people when they are really comfortable. He likes that she’s so chill with him. He likes that she came over, that she was there for him. It makes him feel like the world order’s been restored a little bit or something.
When he wakes up some time later, it’s because she’s kissing his face-first his eyes, then his cheeks, then his nose, and finally his mouth. He opens his eyes and looks at her, but she’s already dressed again, and he glances at the clock. It’s almost midnight.
He touches her face regretfully. "Shouldna wasted time sleepin’," he slurs, still not quite awake. He doesn’t want her to go, but he knows he can’t coax her into staying; it would be bad news for both of them.
"If you want Quinn to let you be there when the baby’s born, you should sing to her."
His eyes open all the way and his brain kicks on, the cobwebs of drowsiness wafting away as he looks at her. "What?" he asks.
"I’m serious. Just sing her a song. Girls love that shit." She gives him a look, like he knows that already, and yeah, he totally does, but it seems like a odd piece of advice for Santana to give him. "Not something like ‘Lady is a Tramp,’ though. Something better. Something about a baby, preferably."
She pushes herself off the bed and finds the band he’d pulled from her hair earlier. She scoops her hair up into a ponytail, and secures it high on the back of her head. She looks down at him. "Can you think of something?"
He nods. A song from the KISS songbook came instantly to mind, one that he and the guys had practiced before they decided that “Shout It Out Loud” was more fun. "Yeah. You’re right. I shoulda thought of that before." He sits up, scooting to the side of the bed. He grabs her hand. "Thanks, San."
She just stares down at him, a little smile on her lips. He’s not sure why she’s being so nice, but something inside him tells him he can trust it.
He can trust her. He always has, so that’s another strange thought. This whole day was just weird, all the way around.
He pulls her closer so she’s standing between his knees. She’s fully clothed, and he’s totally naked, but he feels like she just exposed herself a little. “You know what song I’d sing to you?” he asks, grinning up at her.
She lifts an eyebrow and gives him a look that says he better have a good answer for his own question (especially since he’s sitting there buck naked). "Schue would never let me do it, but," and hoping he can hit the note, he clears his throat once or twice before he sings, "She's a brick….house. She’s migh-ty migh-ty, just lettin' it all hang out-" he cuts himself off when she starts laughing and shoves her hand against his shoulder.
She leans down and presses her lips to his. "I appreciate the sentiment," she says against his mouth. "Really." She rubs her hand over his mohawk-less scalp affectionately. "I’ll see you tomorrow."
~*~
The next day, Santana holds up her faux lighter while Puck and the other guys sing to Quinn. She thinks maybe being true to yourself just means being honest with yourself. There’s a smile on her face that feels real, and when Quinn tearfully nods her head at Puck’s request, she’s glad.
There are battles ahead of her, she’s sure of it. At least now she knows what she’s fighting for.