[fic] After a Hurricane Comes a Rainbow
Title: After a Hurricane Comes a Rainbow
Author: badboy_fangirl
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Puck/Quinn
Warnings: Goes AU during the 1x22 "Journey" hospital scene (i.e.: Shelby never shows up to conveniently adopt Beth). Dialogue lifted from that episode.
Word count: ~3600 (That's more than double what was paid for! Sorry I'm fond of words.)
Summary: Puck and Quinn keep the baby--because they're nuts.
Author’s Notes: I wrote this for aboutbefore, for fandomaid, who has always wished that Puck and Quinn kept their baby. Beta'd and improved greatly by the illustrious andbless_mybaby. (Credit to Steph for the term 'non-pussified' because that's a Puck word I did not invent!) Title stolen from Lea Michele's version of "Firework." Jess, I hope your wish is at least somewhat fulfilled!
This story is dedicated to Larkin R. Pitzer,
who will forever be known as "Lexi." :D
Sometimes when they practice their choreography for Regionals, Puck's hand will accidentally brush against Quinn's belly. It's actually kinda hard to miss, and seems to get bigger every day. They're partners, so they have to touch, though it's a lot more about the girls wrapping their arms around the guys. So sometimes he feels his kid kicking him in the lower back while Quinn hugs him during their dance routine.
To say those are generally the best parts of his day is like saying the sky is fucking blue.
Quinn goes into labor after their performance at Regionals, surprising everyone because Beth's not supposed to show up for three more weeks. Puck pushes the wheelchair down the hospital hallway, the whole Glee Club at his heels, and it all happens so fast he feels like he's exploding. Really it's Quinn who's exploding, her blood everywhere, tears all over her face.
And then it's over and his daughter is cleaned up, wrapped in a blanket, and handed to her mother. As if everything is now happening in slow motion, he takes in Quinn's face, full of light and joy, and Beth, her small eyes blinking against the harsh lights hanging over them. It looks like she's looking right at Quinn, like she gets what's happening.
There's this weird pinching tightness in his chest, and he feels like he's falling off a cliff. He'd had this fucking crazy conversation with his mother just the day before, and now here it was.
The moment.
He's got one chance to make that touchdown or fumble the ball (again) right before he hits the end zone.
"She looks like you," he says as they watch their daughter sleeping through the glass. She's bundled up tight, like a mummy-baby, and he wants to hold her again because he only got to for like five minutes the first time. Quinn had handed her to him like she wasn't sure he could handle it, but Beth fit in his arms like nothing else ever had. (Ever would.) Then the nurses had taken her away for all these tests to make sure she was okay.
Quinn stands beside him, her body already healing from the ordeal she's been through. The nurse said that it was completely normal, given that she was so young. Your body was designed to do this; it knows how to fix itself, too.
Puck feels stupefied by the whole day. He can't believe she did what she did, and that now she's just chilling next to him, looking tired, but otherwise fine. He hasn't seen her hair this messy since the night he talked her out of her spankies. "Do you wanna keep her?" he asks. But he already knows. The longer he stands there looking at his kid, with her perfect bow lips and her round cheeks, the more he knows he doesn't want to give her away.
Quinn doesn't hesitate. "No. Do you?"
He doesn't answer out loud, he can't. He can't say no. He can't say yes. Yes.
It's silent there in the corridor, as if the entire hospital awaits the next question Quinn asks. "Did you love me?"
This one is easier to respond to, and so he just does, telling the absolute truth. "Yes." Beautiful, untouchable Quinn Fabray, who had for one brief window of time let him put his hands on her. "Especially now," he adds, because he'd watched her lay her life down today and take it up again. A small laugh escapes him when she looks surprised. That's the problem. Quinn had never believed anything he said, even though he'd been, like, 95% truthful with her.
"Quinn," he says softly, reaching his hand over, brushing his fingers along the curve of her cheek. "I want to keep her." I want to keep you both. "I talked to my mom, and she said if you wanted to give her up, you could give her up to me."
"What?" Quinn gasps, jerking away from his touch. Her expression instantly goes from soft to angry, just like he expected; that's why he hadn't answered honestly to begin with. "No! No," she insists shaking her head vigorously.
"Why not? I'm her dad. I have to sign something to give her up, same as you, and I don't want to. So you sign it and give her up to me, and I'll take care of her."
Quinn snorts, a sound he's never heard from her before. "You're kidding me, right? You think I'm just gonna sign her over to you?"
"Why the fuck not?" he asks. She makes him feel so fucking inferior with hardly any effort that he goes from wanting to say what's easier for her to hear to wanting pound his fist through the drywall just behind them.
She rolls her eyes and speaks loudly, like he's a fucking retard, "YOU'RE SEVENTEEN! We're not--"
It's not like it would go any better, even if he'd tried to say all this to her some place else. It's not like the weird antiseptic smell of the hospital is what's causing this trainwreck. It's all him; it's always been him.
"Maybe you're not," he snaps. "But I'm not abandoning my kid." He folds his arms over his chest and turns to face her squarely, to show her he's completely serious.
"You said, last week, when you asked me to let you be there, you said--"
"I know what I said!" he interrupts. "But I fucking changed my mind, okay? Just because you don't want her doesn't mean I--"
She slaps his face so hard and so unexpectedly that he yelps and jumps back from her.
It's like her whole body's vibrating, or maybe she clocked him just right and he's seeing double, but he hears her loud and clear though she barely whispers, "I never said I didn't want her."
Puck stares her down, and though his cheek stings like a mother fucker, he doesn't give her the satisfaction of seeing him cradle his jaw in his hand. Tears fill her eyes, and so he says the only logical thing left to say.
"Then don't give her away."
A week later, she's back living at his house, and they've switched bedrooms with his mom so they have more room for the baby. Puck thinks any second he's going to wake up from this dream (that often feels like a nightmare when Beth cries for no apparent reason and they can't figure out what the hell is wrong with her), but then they'll have a quiet moment, one where Quinn's lying on the bed and Beth's propped up beside her being breast fed. (He'd never tell anyone what he's thinking then--the fucking most beautiful thing he's ever seen, no lie--but he's, like, super happy.)
Totally fucked and sleep deprived and Quinn's slave, but oh-so-happy. He's got his girls, and they are his even if one doesn't know it and the other one doesn't give a shit about him because he's not the milk truck.
His mom is really helpful when she's around, and Bekah practically slobbers over the baby all the time, so much so that he's had to shoo her away when Quinn looks at him with desperate eyes.
But sometimes, when it's quiet and the only thing he can hear is little sucking noises and all he can see is Quinn feeding their baby, he feels like he could fucking cry. But in a good non-pussified way.
A few weeks in, they sort of establish a good pattern, they get the hang of things a little bit, and so Puck takes to laying down on the bed with them during feeding time, just watching, not saying anything. (Quinn never likes his helpful suggestions anyway.) She glances up at him, her hair spread out over the pillow and one of her arms curved around Beth's little body. Then she smiles at him, slow, soft, sweet. He wishes he had a camera so he could show her what he means when he whispers, "You're so fuckin' beautiful."
Her face flushes, but she keeps staring at him, and Puck is sort of out-of-nowhere turned on. He feels a little guilty because his daughter's right there, but he's got a raging hard-on for her mother, and he supposes that's the point. Quinn got pregnant because of that feeling, because he couldn't not feel that way, because he had to try to score with her.
And score he did.
He reaches over, his fingers moving gently over his daughter's soft blonde cap of curls. It's a ploy of course, because then he lets them drift further down to Quinn's breast, and she takes a shaky breath, but doesn't smack his hand away or anything. He knows that sound, it's a good one. It's another reason she's his baby momma. He grins because he's the man, and he knows it. He leans into her, rubbing his lips over hers and she sighs a little and her mouth falls open, so he kisses her, sliding his tongue inside, coaxing her lips into moving against his. It's, like, the best kiss ever.
Like, ever, ever.
When he pulls back, Quinn looks dazed and confused, and Beth's sound asleep. He looks down and chuckles softly, dragging his knuckle down Quinn's breast (she gasps just a little) and then skimming it over Beth's pretty little cheek. "You should sleep, right?" he asks. "Sleep when the baby sleeps?"
Dragging his eyes up to hers instead of staring at her boobs (because, man, he's always liked them, but they're bigger and different now, and really fucking fascinating), he smiles when she does. She nods and draws the robe she's wearing closed so that she's covered up.
He leans forward and presses his lips to her forehead. "I'll come get you when dinner's ready," he whispers.
The baby sleeps in a bassinet for a couple months before Quinn starts saying stuff about them needing a crib. She gets some money from her mom (who's pissed she's living with Puck's family, but he figured out how to sneak Quinn bacon when his mom's not looking, and Quinn's kosher enough to eat it in private, and really that works out all the difficulties there). They just fit together better in Puck's house, even though it's pretty tight living quarters compared with Quinn's house.
He gets his mom to take Beth and Quinn out one day, keeping them away from the house for several hours. He assembles the crib they had delivered and then he finds the frame his mother picked up for Beth's birth certificate. He hammers a nail into the wall just above the crib and hangs it there, so it's visible to everyone.
Quinn cries when he shows it to her and her fingers ghost over the glass covering their baby's name--Beth Larkin Puckerman, Beth for well, "Beth," and Larkin for Quinn's favorite grandma (her maiden name). It's kind of a cool rockstar name, Puck decides, convinced his daughter is destined for greatness.
She turns to him and circles her arms around his neck tightly, hugging him hard. He smoothes his hands up and down her back and hopes. (He's been hoping ever since she came home from her check-up a few weeks before and said, "The doctor said I could resume all my normal activities." Not that sex was one of Quinn Fabray's normal activities, but Puck knew he could help her get there.) Sometimes he wonders if she needs a ring, and thinks maybe he should get her something, some kind of promise to back up what he's trying to show her he means.
Then she kisses him, her tongue flirting with the seam of his lips, and he forgets to think at all. She whispers something about breast feeding being a great form of birth control, and he's totally sprung and wondering what the hell is happening as she leads him towards the bed they've been sleeping in together every night.
There's this totally awkward moment--the one where he's pushing inside her and she's as stiff and unwelcoming as she should have been the night he took her virginity--and it totally throws his game off. "You okay?" he grunts and she's shaking her head and blinking her eyes really fast like she's trying not to cry.
"What, baby?" he asks, completely stilling his movements. It's hard not to move, but the look on her face is killing him.
"It hurts," she whimpers and he can feel her trying to relax, the deep breaths echoing against his chest, but nothing seems to be loosening up.
"Too bad we don't have any wine coolers," he quips and she pinches him, in a really sensitive spot so that he cries out, but then they both start laughing.
He presses his face to her shoulder. "God, why do we suck so much?" he asks, and that makes Quinn laugh harder, and the vibrations feel really amazing to him, so he wishes she was feeling as good.
It gives him a minute to think, to remember he's a guy with skills in this department, even if with Quinn it always feels like his first time instead of hers. He captures her laughing, open mouth with his and kisses her, long and deep. He focuses his tongue along the roof of her mouth and over her own tongue until she's really into it, kissing him back hard, her fingers digging into his shoulders.
He slips a hand between them, rubbing his thumb over her clit until her hips are moving up into his eagerly. She makes a few sounds that are borderline hot but still let him know it's not totally awesome yet. Just when he's thinking she's not gonna get there, she moans deep in her throat, bites his bottom lip so that pleasure-pain ripples through him, and he comes even though he had been trying really fucking hard not to.
They've grown up way too fast, and most days it's the hardest thing he's ever done, just trying to keep it all together, but when Quinn pants, "I love you," in his ear, he knows he'd walk barefoot and bass-ackwards across the Mojave Desert (you know, if he ever moved to California), move heaven and earth, do whatever he's got to, to keep his little family together.
He moves his thumb in a circular motion in just the right spot and she arches beneath him, her eyes flaring wide as it finally consumes her. Nothing with Quinn has ever been easy, so it's kinda their thing to take the long way to everything.
But she loves him, and that's something he never expected.
When Beth is eight months old, they have a huge fight about, of all things, Rachel Berry. (Turns out Quinn gets jealous when they do a duet in Glee together, because it's kind of a sexy song, and she doesn't like it.)
Puck knows he's looking at her like she's a fucking lunatic, but she is. Seriously, Rachel Berry? When he's got Quinn Fabray? Hell to the no. When he says that, she bursts into tears, and he can't figure it out at all, like what is he supposed to do? He's a friggin' teenaged dad who's trying to finish high school and work a part time job and have a relationship and please his mother sort of somehow even though he's such a fuck up, and seriously? Who would have time for side action? Especially with a girl who would obviously be even more work than the one he's got?
(He doesn't say that out loud, because he's not, like, a complete idiot.)
He just shrugs his shoulders and says, "Baby, you know I love you."
She flings herself against his chest and cries, for like, an hour. She doesn't say anything, just squeezes him tight and gets snot on his shirt. That might have squicked him a little back in the day, but now he's had baby poop from one end of him to the other, so snot is really not that big a deal.
And besides it's Quinn. She just doesn't get it, that really, she's it for him. And he doesn't know how to make her understand it either.
"Do you want to get married?" he asks. "Will that convince you?"
She pulls back, mopping at her face with the hem of her shirt. Shaking her head negatively, she moves away from him, sitting on the end of their bed. (Bekah had put Beth in her stroller and took her for a walk around the block so they could have their fight.) "This is crazy, Puck. Don't you see that? By the time I'm 32, I'll have been a mother for half my life. We'll have been together for half my life!"
He watches her closely, trying to figure out what she's saying exactly. "So?" He tries to say it like he cares, but by the way she glares at him, he figures he failed.
"So, you eye fucking Rachel Berry doesn't make this seem like a very good life choice!" She gestures widely, indicating the whole room, Beth's crib and all their stuff jammed into the relatively small space
Puck sighs, and then follows her to the bed. He gets on his knees in front of her, pushing her legs apart (not in a sexual way), so he's close to her and grips her face in his hands. "Look, Fabray, you can borrow trouble all you want, and I can make promises all day long that that's not gonna happen, but I don't think that's gonna make you feel any better. Am I right?"
She just shrugs, frowning at some place about the middle of his chest.
"This was my idea, remember?" he says, giving her a little shake so she looks into his eyes. "I wanted Beth, and I wanted you. I'm the one who should be waiting for you to bail at any moment, but you know why I don't think that?" She's watching him intently now, and she just barely shakes her head as he finishes, "Because I just always remember you slapping the shit out of me, and I know you. I know that we're young, and that life is hard, and that it might get harder, but I also know that somewhere along the way we stopped thinking about just ourselves. When we started thinking about Beth first--that's what changed everything. That's what makes us work. I loved you before, when I knew I'd never have you, but I love you way more now, Quinn. Way more."
About that time, Bekah comes running up the stairs, and Puck hears Beth screaming her head off. He jumps up in a panic, as does Quinn. "What's the matter?"
"There was this dog--" Bekah gasps.
"Holy shit, where'd it bite her?" Puck demands, jerking Beth into his arms and scanning her little body for blood. Her face is flushed and tear-streaked and when she sees him, she quiets some. Her screaming reduces to little sobs and hiccups and one of her hands curls into the flannel of his shirt.
"It didn't bite her!" Bekah yells, still freaked out, her eyes wide as saucers. "It just scared her because it stuck its face in the stroller. I ran it off, but she won't stop crying."
Puck cradles the baby while Quinn croons to her and looks over Beth's head at his sister. "Sorry, Beks. It's cool, she'll be alright." His little sister visibly relaxes, and he reaches out his arm to pull her tight into his side. "You're alright too, right?" he asks.
Bekah's face burrows into his side and she nods. "Yeah, I'm alright," she says, but he can feel her body trembling a little.
All of a sudden, he realizes he's got a baby in his arms, and a little girl glued to his side, and Quinn's eyes are on him, wet with more tears, but in a different way than just a few minutes before. He gets it, like instantly, that he somehow just passed some kind of test that neither of them knew he would be taking. He wants to say I promise I won't eye fuck Rachel anymore, even for a performance but instead he winks at her.
Maybe she gets what he means anyway, because she leans up on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek. Then she takes a still-sniffly Beth from him and says, "I'll nurse her a little, that always calms her down."
He watches his girlfriend sit down on the bed and mother the child she was determined to give away less than a year ago effortlessly. Maybe they are young and stupid, but they are also kinda good at it. Gotta play to your strengths, after all, isn't that what Coach Beiste always tells them at practice?
He drags Bekah down the stairs to the kitchen and they start making dinner. His mom will be home from work soon, and they try to have the meal nearly on the table when she gets there. Quinn and Beth join them a while later, and after she's put into her high chair, his daughter eats Cheerios enthusiastically while the three of them dance around the kitchen making salad, spaghetti, and French bread.
He looks around at the hot mess that they've got going on and all he can think is that it's fuckin' perfect.
Author: badboy_fangirl
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Puck/Quinn
Warnings: Goes AU during the 1x22 "Journey" hospital scene (i.e.: Shelby never shows up to conveniently adopt Beth). Dialogue lifted from that episode.
Word count: ~3600 (That's more than double what was paid for! Sorry I'm fond of words.)
Summary: Puck and Quinn keep the baby--because they're nuts.
Author’s Notes: I wrote this for aboutbefore, for fandomaid, who has always wished that Puck and Quinn kept their baby. Beta'd and improved greatly by the illustrious andbless_mybaby. (Credit to Steph for the term 'non-pussified' because that's a Puck word I did not invent!) Title stolen from Lea Michele's version of "Firework." Jess, I hope your wish is at least somewhat fulfilled!
This story is dedicated to Larkin R. Pitzer,
who will forever be known as "Lexi." :D
Sometimes when they practice their choreography for Regionals, Puck's hand will accidentally brush against Quinn's belly. It's actually kinda hard to miss, and seems to get bigger every day. They're partners, so they have to touch, though it's a lot more about the girls wrapping their arms around the guys. So sometimes he feels his kid kicking him in the lower back while Quinn hugs him during their dance routine.
To say those are generally the best parts of his day is like saying the sky is fucking blue.
Quinn goes into labor after their performance at Regionals, surprising everyone because Beth's not supposed to show up for three more weeks. Puck pushes the wheelchair down the hospital hallway, the whole Glee Club at his heels, and it all happens so fast he feels like he's exploding. Really it's Quinn who's exploding, her blood everywhere, tears all over her face.
And then it's over and his daughter is cleaned up, wrapped in a blanket, and handed to her mother. As if everything is now happening in slow motion, he takes in Quinn's face, full of light and joy, and Beth, her small eyes blinking against the harsh lights hanging over them. It looks like she's looking right at Quinn, like she gets what's happening.
There's this weird pinching tightness in his chest, and he feels like he's falling off a cliff. He'd had this fucking crazy conversation with his mother just the day before, and now here it was.
The moment.
He's got one chance to make that touchdown or fumble the ball (again) right before he hits the end zone.
"She looks like you," he says as they watch their daughter sleeping through the glass. She's bundled up tight, like a mummy-baby, and he wants to hold her again because he only got to for like five minutes the first time. Quinn had handed her to him like she wasn't sure he could handle it, but Beth fit in his arms like nothing else ever had. (Ever would.) Then the nurses had taken her away for all these tests to make sure she was okay.
Quinn stands beside him, her body already healing from the ordeal she's been through. The nurse said that it was completely normal, given that she was so young. Your body was designed to do this; it knows how to fix itself, too.
Puck feels stupefied by the whole day. He can't believe she did what she did, and that now she's just chilling next to him, looking tired, but otherwise fine. He hasn't seen her hair this messy since the night he talked her out of her spankies. "Do you wanna keep her?" he asks. But he already knows. The longer he stands there looking at his kid, with her perfect bow lips and her round cheeks, the more he knows he doesn't want to give her away.
Quinn doesn't hesitate. "No. Do you?"
He doesn't answer out loud, he can't. He can't say no. He can't say yes. Yes.
It's silent there in the corridor, as if the entire hospital awaits the next question Quinn asks. "Did you love me?"
This one is easier to respond to, and so he just does, telling the absolute truth. "Yes." Beautiful, untouchable Quinn Fabray, who had for one brief window of time let him put his hands on her. "Especially now," he adds, because he'd watched her lay her life down today and take it up again. A small laugh escapes him when she looks surprised. That's the problem. Quinn had never believed anything he said, even though he'd been, like, 95% truthful with her.
"Quinn," he says softly, reaching his hand over, brushing his fingers along the curve of her cheek. "I want to keep her." I want to keep you both. "I talked to my mom, and she said if you wanted to give her up, you could give her up to me."
"What?" Quinn gasps, jerking away from his touch. Her expression instantly goes from soft to angry, just like he expected; that's why he hadn't answered honestly to begin with. "No! No," she insists shaking her head vigorously.
"Why not? I'm her dad. I have to sign something to give her up, same as you, and I don't want to. So you sign it and give her up to me, and I'll take care of her."
Quinn snorts, a sound he's never heard from her before. "You're kidding me, right? You think I'm just gonna sign her over to you?"
"Why the fuck not?" he asks. She makes him feel so fucking inferior with hardly any effort that he goes from wanting to say what's easier for her to hear to wanting pound his fist through the drywall just behind them.
She rolls her eyes and speaks loudly, like he's a fucking retard, "YOU'RE SEVENTEEN! We're not--"
It's not like it would go any better, even if he'd tried to say all this to her some place else. It's not like the weird antiseptic smell of the hospital is what's causing this trainwreck. It's all him; it's always been him.
"Maybe you're not," he snaps. "But I'm not abandoning my kid." He folds his arms over his chest and turns to face her squarely, to show her he's completely serious.
"You said, last week, when you asked me to let you be there, you said--"
"I know what I said!" he interrupts. "But I fucking changed my mind, okay? Just because you don't want her doesn't mean I--"
She slaps his face so hard and so unexpectedly that he yelps and jumps back from her.
It's like her whole body's vibrating, or maybe she clocked him just right and he's seeing double, but he hears her loud and clear though she barely whispers, "I never said I didn't want her."
Puck stares her down, and though his cheek stings like a mother fucker, he doesn't give her the satisfaction of seeing him cradle his jaw in his hand. Tears fill her eyes, and so he says the only logical thing left to say.
"Then don't give her away."
A week later, she's back living at his house, and they've switched bedrooms with his mom so they have more room for the baby. Puck thinks any second he's going to wake up from this dream (that often feels like a nightmare when Beth cries for no apparent reason and they can't figure out what the hell is wrong with her), but then they'll have a quiet moment, one where Quinn's lying on the bed and Beth's propped up beside her being breast fed. (He'd never tell anyone what he's thinking then--the fucking most beautiful thing he's ever seen, no lie--but he's, like, super happy.)
Totally fucked and sleep deprived and Quinn's slave, but oh-so-happy. He's got his girls, and they are his even if one doesn't know it and the other one doesn't give a shit about him because he's not the milk truck.
His mom is really helpful when she's around, and Bekah practically slobbers over the baby all the time, so much so that he's had to shoo her away when Quinn looks at him with desperate eyes.
But sometimes, when it's quiet and the only thing he can hear is little sucking noises and all he can see is Quinn feeding their baby, he feels like he could fucking cry. But in a good non-pussified way.
A few weeks in, they sort of establish a good pattern, they get the hang of things a little bit, and so Puck takes to laying down on the bed with them during feeding time, just watching, not saying anything. (Quinn never likes his helpful suggestions anyway.) She glances up at him, her hair spread out over the pillow and one of her arms curved around Beth's little body. Then she smiles at him, slow, soft, sweet. He wishes he had a camera so he could show her what he means when he whispers, "You're so fuckin' beautiful."
Her face flushes, but she keeps staring at him, and Puck is sort of out-of-nowhere turned on. He feels a little guilty because his daughter's right there, but he's got a raging hard-on for her mother, and he supposes that's the point. Quinn got pregnant because of that feeling, because he couldn't not feel that way, because he had to try to score with her.
And score he did.
He reaches over, his fingers moving gently over his daughter's soft blonde cap of curls. It's a ploy of course, because then he lets them drift further down to Quinn's breast, and she takes a shaky breath, but doesn't smack his hand away or anything. He knows that sound, it's a good one. It's another reason she's his baby momma. He grins because he's the man, and he knows it. He leans into her, rubbing his lips over hers and she sighs a little and her mouth falls open, so he kisses her, sliding his tongue inside, coaxing her lips into moving against his. It's, like, the best kiss ever.
Like, ever, ever.
When he pulls back, Quinn looks dazed and confused, and Beth's sound asleep. He looks down and chuckles softly, dragging his knuckle down Quinn's breast (she gasps just a little) and then skimming it over Beth's pretty little cheek. "You should sleep, right?" he asks. "Sleep when the baby sleeps?"
Dragging his eyes up to hers instead of staring at her boobs (because, man, he's always liked them, but they're bigger and different now, and really fucking fascinating), he smiles when she does. She nods and draws the robe she's wearing closed so that she's covered up.
He leans forward and presses his lips to her forehead. "I'll come get you when dinner's ready," he whispers.
The baby sleeps in a bassinet for a couple months before Quinn starts saying stuff about them needing a crib. She gets some money from her mom (who's pissed she's living with Puck's family, but he figured out how to sneak Quinn bacon when his mom's not looking, and Quinn's kosher enough to eat it in private, and really that works out all the difficulties there). They just fit together better in Puck's house, even though it's pretty tight living quarters compared with Quinn's house.
He gets his mom to take Beth and Quinn out one day, keeping them away from the house for several hours. He assembles the crib they had delivered and then he finds the frame his mother picked up for Beth's birth certificate. He hammers a nail into the wall just above the crib and hangs it there, so it's visible to everyone.
Quinn cries when he shows it to her and her fingers ghost over the glass covering their baby's name--Beth Larkin Puckerman, Beth for well, "Beth," and Larkin for Quinn's favorite grandma (her maiden name). It's kind of a cool rockstar name, Puck decides, convinced his daughter is destined for greatness.
She turns to him and circles her arms around his neck tightly, hugging him hard. He smoothes his hands up and down her back and hopes. (He's been hoping ever since she came home from her check-up a few weeks before and said, "The doctor said I could resume all my normal activities." Not that sex was one of Quinn Fabray's normal activities, but Puck knew he could help her get there.) Sometimes he wonders if she needs a ring, and thinks maybe he should get her something, some kind of promise to back up what he's trying to show her he means.
Then she kisses him, her tongue flirting with the seam of his lips, and he forgets to think at all. She whispers something about breast feeding being a great form of birth control, and he's totally sprung and wondering what the hell is happening as she leads him towards the bed they've been sleeping in together every night.
There's this totally awkward moment--the one where he's pushing inside her and she's as stiff and unwelcoming as she should have been the night he took her virginity--and it totally throws his game off. "You okay?" he grunts and she's shaking her head and blinking her eyes really fast like she's trying not to cry.
"What, baby?" he asks, completely stilling his movements. It's hard not to move, but the look on her face is killing him.
"It hurts," she whimpers and he can feel her trying to relax, the deep breaths echoing against his chest, but nothing seems to be loosening up.
"Too bad we don't have any wine coolers," he quips and she pinches him, in a really sensitive spot so that he cries out, but then they both start laughing.
He presses his face to her shoulder. "God, why do we suck so much?" he asks, and that makes Quinn laugh harder, and the vibrations feel really amazing to him, so he wishes she was feeling as good.
It gives him a minute to think, to remember he's a guy with skills in this department, even if with Quinn it always feels like his first time instead of hers. He captures her laughing, open mouth with his and kisses her, long and deep. He focuses his tongue along the roof of her mouth and over her own tongue until she's really into it, kissing him back hard, her fingers digging into his shoulders.
He slips a hand between them, rubbing his thumb over her clit until her hips are moving up into his eagerly. She makes a few sounds that are borderline hot but still let him know it's not totally awesome yet. Just when he's thinking she's not gonna get there, she moans deep in her throat, bites his bottom lip so that pleasure-pain ripples through him, and he comes even though he had been trying really fucking hard not to.
They've grown up way too fast, and most days it's the hardest thing he's ever done, just trying to keep it all together, but when Quinn pants, "I love you," in his ear, he knows he'd walk barefoot and bass-ackwards across the Mojave Desert (you know, if he ever moved to California), move heaven and earth, do whatever he's got to, to keep his little family together.
He moves his thumb in a circular motion in just the right spot and she arches beneath him, her eyes flaring wide as it finally consumes her. Nothing with Quinn has ever been easy, so it's kinda their thing to take the long way to everything.
But she loves him, and that's something he never expected.
When Beth is eight months old, they have a huge fight about, of all things, Rachel Berry. (Turns out Quinn gets jealous when they do a duet in Glee together, because it's kind of a sexy song, and she doesn't like it.)
Puck knows he's looking at her like she's a fucking lunatic, but she is. Seriously, Rachel Berry? When he's got Quinn Fabray? Hell to the no. When he says that, she bursts into tears, and he can't figure it out at all, like what is he supposed to do? He's a friggin' teenaged dad who's trying to finish high school and work a part time job and have a relationship and please his mother sort of somehow even though he's such a fuck up, and seriously? Who would have time for side action? Especially with a girl who would obviously be even more work than the one he's got?
(He doesn't say that out loud, because he's not, like, a complete idiot.)
He just shrugs his shoulders and says, "Baby, you know I love you."
She flings herself against his chest and cries, for like, an hour. She doesn't say anything, just squeezes him tight and gets snot on his shirt. That might have squicked him a little back in the day, but now he's had baby poop from one end of him to the other, so snot is really not that big a deal.
And besides it's Quinn. She just doesn't get it, that really, she's it for him. And he doesn't know how to make her understand it either.
"Do you want to get married?" he asks. "Will that convince you?"
She pulls back, mopping at her face with the hem of her shirt. Shaking her head negatively, she moves away from him, sitting on the end of their bed. (Bekah had put Beth in her stroller and took her for a walk around the block so they could have their fight.) "This is crazy, Puck. Don't you see that? By the time I'm 32, I'll have been a mother for half my life. We'll have been together for half my life!"
He watches her closely, trying to figure out what she's saying exactly. "So?" He tries to say it like he cares, but by the way she glares at him, he figures he failed.
"So, you eye fucking Rachel Berry doesn't make this seem like a very good life choice!" She gestures widely, indicating the whole room, Beth's crib and all their stuff jammed into the relatively small space
Puck sighs, and then follows her to the bed. He gets on his knees in front of her, pushing her legs apart (not in a sexual way), so he's close to her and grips her face in his hands. "Look, Fabray, you can borrow trouble all you want, and I can make promises all day long that that's not gonna happen, but I don't think that's gonna make you feel any better. Am I right?"
She just shrugs, frowning at some place about the middle of his chest.
"This was my idea, remember?" he says, giving her a little shake so she looks into his eyes. "I wanted Beth, and I wanted you. I'm the one who should be waiting for you to bail at any moment, but you know why I don't think that?" She's watching him intently now, and she just barely shakes her head as he finishes, "Because I just always remember you slapping the shit out of me, and I know you. I know that we're young, and that life is hard, and that it might get harder, but I also know that somewhere along the way we stopped thinking about just ourselves. When we started thinking about Beth first--that's what changed everything. That's what makes us work. I loved you before, when I knew I'd never have you, but I love you way more now, Quinn. Way more."
About that time, Bekah comes running up the stairs, and Puck hears Beth screaming her head off. He jumps up in a panic, as does Quinn. "What's the matter?"
"There was this dog--" Bekah gasps.
"Holy shit, where'd it bite her?" Puck demands, jerking Beth into his arms and scanning her little body for blood. Her face is flushed and tear-streaked and when she sees him, she quiets some. Her screaming reduces to little sobs and hiccups and one of her hands curls into the flannel of his shirt.
"It didn't bite her!" Bekah yells, still freaked out, her eyes wide as saucers. "It just scared her because it stuck its face in the stroller. I ran it off, but she won't stop crying."
Puck cradles the baby while Quinn croons to her and looks over Beth's head at his sister. "Sorry, Beks. It's cool, she'll be alright." His little sister visibly relaxes, and he reaches out his arm to pull her tight into his side. "You're alright too, right?" he asks.
Bekah's face burrows into his side and she nods. "Yeah, I'm alright," she says, but he can feel her body trembling a little.
All of a sudden, he realizes he's got a baby in his arms, and a little girl glued to his side, and Quinn's eyes are on him, wet with more tears, but in a different way than just a few minutes before. He gets it, like instantly, that he somehow just passed some kind of test that neither of them knew he would be taking. He wants to say I promise I won't eye fuck Rachel anymore, even for a performance but instead he winks at her.
Maybe she gets what he means anyway, because she leans up on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek. Then she takes a still-sniffly Beth from him and says, "I'll nurse her a little, that always calms her down."
He watches his girlfriend sit down on the bed and mother the child she was determined to give away less than a year ago effortlessly. Maybe they are young and stupid, but they are also kinda good at it. Gotta play to your strengths, after all, isn't that what Coach Beiste always tells them at practice?
He drags Bekah down the stairs to the kitchen and they start making dinner. His mom will be home from work soon, and they try to have the meal nearly on the table when she gets there. Quinn and Beth join them a while later, and after she's put into her high chair, his daughter eats Cheerios enthusiastically while the three of them dance around the kitchen making salad, spaghetti, and French bread.
He looks around at the hot mess that they've got going on and all he can think is that it's fuckin' perfect.