"The Bodyguard Job" - Part One
Title: The Bodyguard Job
Chapter: One
Characters: Puck/Rachel, Blaine, Finn, Kurt, Santana and various others in unexpected places.
Rating: R
Word Count: ~2500
Genre: Romance, Drama, Future AU
Warnings: Language
Summary: Noah Puckerman is used to being noticed; but when he begins to get the wrong kind of attention his team hires the least likely bodyguard imaginable. Now he has to convince the world that she's his girlfriend without actually falling for her in the process.
Disclaimer: Ryan Murphy, Fox, et al. own Glee. I own nothing (quite literally) and am making absolutely no profit from this endeavor.
Prompt: Puck is a celebrity with a stalker. Rachel is his unlikely bodyguard. -
puckrachel drabble meme (by:
shaesweetie)
------
"Damnit Noah you're being unreasonable!"
"You're not hiring me a bodyguard Santana and that's final," he snapped back, continuing the argument that had been going on for the last week. "I've got a black belt in karate and I'm trained in judo and jujitsu."
"You've also got a psychopath that we know nothing about stalking you. LAPD has no information on them other then the fact that they know where your house is due to the increasingly graphic messages and dead animals that have been arriving for the last two months," she replied, giving him the glare that he was fairly certain was supposed to convey how stupid she thought he was. "I don't give a shit if you are considered the next Steven Segal, only ya know, with actual acting ability."
"Do you know what it would do to my image if I had a body guard following me around? It'll look like I can't take care of myself."
"There won't be a whole lot to take care of if you're dead now will there," Santana continued, "We all agree on this Noah."
Noah groaned and looked around to the faces at the table in the conference room at Creative Arts Agency that his team had taken over for the afternoon. Santana Lopez, his agent and the first person who had taken achance on him when he was twenty-two, new to LA from Ohio and just out of college with only a few university theatre credits on his resume. The last ten years the two of them had essentially built each other's careers as both had been brand new to the business at the time. Finn Hudson, his oldest friend and now publicist had been hired two years later after Noah's first major movie roll, it had only been a co-starring billing but his looks and talent had garnered a buzz and
almost overnight he was the paparazzi's new golden boy. Blaine Anderson, Santana's number two at the agency, Noah's first real friend in LA (resulting in landing Blaine his job) and had been dating his stylist for the last two years. Finally, Kurt Hummel, another friend from Ohio,
Finn's step-brother and if you asked him, "the person who single handedly keeps you off Melissa River's radar during award's season since you keep asking why you can't wear jeans to the Oscars."
"I'm not going to get killed," was all he could think to reply to the four people that were staring at him with increasingly impatient expressions.
"Puck just shut up," Kurt finally snapped, shocking the table because until that point it had only been Santana talking. "Listen up and listen 'cause I'm only going to say this once. You are one of my best friends and I consider you family, listen to the people who you pay to make your life easier and agree to get a fucking bodyguard."
Noah blinked in shock, not at the words (he had known Kurt since he was a kid and had considered him a friend for just about sixteen years) but at the tone. Kurt never told him what to do, unless it had to do with clothing, and in fact more often then not tended to agree with him over the others. The stylist claimed it was because they were both "artists" and "you're my boyfriend's best friend I have to agree with you for the sake of my sex life".
He knew when Kurt snapped that he had lost his argument and glared at the smug looks being passed around the table by the others. Shaking his head in annoyance he finally exhaled and muttered, "Fine."
"Thank God," Finn whispered and Noah immediately felt bad, his friend had been worried the last few months and Noah had just brushed it off. He hadn't been thinking about how this might be effecting the closest people he had to family in California. With his Mom still in Ohio and his sister in Chicago it had been easy to ignore the threat against him. "So, how are we going to do this?"
"I've got an idea," Blaine finally spoke up. "Noah doesn't want this to effect his image and quite frankly we don't want the stalker to get more
dangerous. If the stalker thinks he's still accessible, as it were, then they might step things up. As of right now it's just an obsession, creepy letters detailing how they belong together, so on and so forth."
"You're forgetting about the dead dog on the doorstep," Kurt muttered, looking nauseous. "I'm still disturbed that they got passed the gate on your property," he added, thinking of the house in the Hollywood Hills Noah owned that everyone thought was an unknown location.
"I'm not forgetting that," Blaine replied. "But my point was, what if no one knows you have a bodyguard?"
"And how are they not going to know that?" Santana questioned, looking confused as she glanced up from the list of agency's she had been shoving in Noah's face for over a week.
"Athena Academy," Blaine responded, pushing a sheet of paper across the table to Santana. "Female bodyguards."
"Female?" four voices answered his statement in varying degrees of confusion.
"Yes. I made a call already. I explained the situation and my idea. They agreed with me and even said they had someone specific in mind."
"Okay?" Finn prompted. "What's your idea?"
"Noah Puckerman, serial dater, finally meets a girl who can hold his attention longer then a week."
Noah stared back at Blaine for a few seconds before almost doubling over in laughter; he only laughed harder at the scowl on his friends face. He finally calmed down and explained the reasoning behind his humor, "This is a bodyguard Blaine. Do you really think anyone would believe I'd date a chick that looks like that?"
"Yes," Blaine replied simply and shot him the same smirk Noah himself was known for. "Trust me on this."
Two days later Noah once again found himself sitting in the conference room with his team, only this time they were waiting on another person to join them and Noah had a different ball of dread in his stomach. He was an actor, a damn good one too, but even he didn't know how to be convincing over the fact that he was dating a woman who was a bodyguard. The closest he had ever come was in High School when this chick Lauren something-or-other from the wrestling team had been scarily obsessed with him for two years. He had taken her out once in the beginning of junior year for what he planned as being a horrible date, hoping that she'd decide he was an asshole, and all it had done was make her like him more. Ironically, it hadn't been until three months later when he was forced to participate in the spring play that she had backed off and decided he was a "loser". He'd never been more thankful for getting caught throwing a geek in a dumpster then that year since it resulted in him finding his future profession. That was also the same year that he began to get friendly with Kurt due to the play, resulting in Finn and Kurt meeting on more civil terms, resulting in their parents getting married.
"Okay, so her name is Rachel Adler," Blaine's voice brought Noah back into the discussion that was going on around him. He watched as his friend began to rattle off information from the file open in front of him, "She's also thirty-two. Joined the Department of the Treasury right after finishing her degree in psychology at Georgetown. Two years later she had gained a Masters in Psych, also from Georgetown and was recruited to the Secret Service. Three years on the first daughter's detail, two on the first lady's and then three on the President."
"Wait, I'm going to be protected by someone who was trained to take a bullet for the President of the United States? Isn't that a little extreme?"
"She's not with the Service anymore," Blaine continued as though Noah hadn't spoken. "Well, not really anyway. She was shot in that assassination attempt last year, so not only is she trained to do it but she has done it. She's since taken a leave of absence. She wants to
finish her Ph.D. in criminal psychology and is cleared to work in the private sector while she does that. Any questions?"
"Yea," Noah replied. "Is she hot?"
"I don't know Mr. Puckerman, you tell me," a female voice floated from the doorway and Noah, along with everyone else, turned toward the doorway. When he saw the figure standing there his jaw dropped. "Well, do I pass muster?" she questioned, her voice taking on an amused tone as if she knew exactly how much she passed.
"Holy shit," Santana muttered. "Do you want a job? Fuck Puckerman...I could get you top billing in the next romantic comedy. Wait, can you act?"
"I guess that means I'm hot," was Rachel Adler's only response, even as her eyes never left his.
"Yea, little bit," he agreed quickly, smirking and cursing himself internally for letting her see his shock. "So babe how're we going to do this?"
When he saw her slight eye roll at, he assumed, the use of 'babe' instead of her name he smirked even more. The tiny brunette crossed the room and pulled out the empty chair next to him before sitting down and leaning back in the chair, allowing him to observe her up close.
She was wearing jeans, a long sleeved v-necked shirt, brown boots and a brown leather jacket. He was more then a little shocked, and turned on, to realize as she shifted in the chair that under her jacket was a shoulder holster. Long brown hair was pulled up in a pony tail, the only jewelry she was wearing was a star of david necklace and he could tell she had just a minimal amount of make-up on. He knew in that instant that he was fucked and had to remind himself that he couldn't actually date the woman sitting next to him; even if she did look like a cross between his perfect woman and Lara Croft. And considering he had been in the newest Lara Croft movie a few years earlier he would know. Also, she looked so damned familiar that it was almost overshadowing her extreme hotness.
"Aren't you kind of tiny?" Finn questioned, earning an eye roll from both Rachel and Noah.
The woman was barely over five feet tall, but being highly trained in martial arts himself he could tell she was dangerous just by how she had moved across the room. One thing his training had taught him since he began with karate at seven was that size didn't matter in martial arts. So her stature didn't phase him one instant, like it appeared to have the others.
"Dude, how long have you known me? My sister in her size and has kicked your ass. You should know her height doesn't matter."
"And three days ago you didn't even want a bodyguard," Kurt piped in. "How cute."
"Yea well," Noah responded. "She's hot."
"Eloquent," Blaine interjected with a laugh. "Anyway, Ms. Adler, I believe Noah had a good question. How are we going to do this?"
He watched as Rachel nodded and reached into the bag she had brought with her, pulling out a file and setting it on the table. She shuffled through the papers and only a single glance told him it was a file on his situation, as he could see copies of the letters he received.
"I looked through what I was given and I think you were right to hire a bodyguard. This person believes they essentially own Mr. Puckerman and seeks to fully posesess him. Based on the word choice in the letter I believe it's a woman; which makes hiring me and having me pose as Mr. Puckerman's girlfriend is an ideal situation. It'll throw the stalker off kilter, all they've had to deal with so far is casual dating. A steady girlfriend will hopefully cause them to be thrown off enough to make a mistake. I've already spoken to the lead detective and have given my recommendations on what they should be looking into."
"And, how do you know all this?" Kurt questioned, looking more then a little confused.
"Mr. Anderson has my profile. I'm not just an attractive blunt object Mr. Hummel. I'm ABD in Criminal Psychology. After this job is finished I
just have to teach for a year and defend my dissertation."
"We didn't introduce ourselves," Kurt replied, looking suspicious. "How do we know you aren't the stalker?"
Noah almost laughed when one perfectly manicured eyebrow rose and the woman sitting next to him smirked and responded, "Simple Mr. Hummel. It's my job to know these things. I take my job very, very seriously."
Noah watched as one by one everyone else at the table began to relax slightly. They had all been getting tenser and tenser as the last two
months went on and the stalker seemingly got closer and with the words of one tiny little (and blatantly dangerous) brunette they seemed to
have it lifted off of them. They could now get back to their actual jobs and leave the stalker to his new "girl" and the LAPD.
He decided he'd help them out, "So baby, let's blow this joint, go be seen in public making goo-goo eyes at each other and work out a story."
"Alright," she agreed with a shrug. "As for our story? That's an easy one."
"It is?"
"Wow," Rachel whispered and Noah became even more confused because the brunette actually looked honestly surprised for the first time since she had arrived. She finally shook her head slightly and looked up and him and spoke, "Yes, if anyone asks we're childhood friends who have reconnected."
"Why would you say that?" Santana asked, interjecting herself into the conversation. "Wouldn't that get more confusing since you should know things about each other?"
"Well," Rachel replied. "It's the truth."
And with that statement it all hit him like a ton of bricks, "Holy shit. Rachel Berry."
Standing in front of him was a girl he hadn't seen since the eighth grade when her parents moved away from Lima. She had always gone to a nearby private school, but their parents had been friends from Temple and basically from the second he hit puberty his mother had been on his back for him to date Rachel.
"Got it in one," she responded, chuckling. "I'm guessing the last name threw you off?"
That comment had him quickly clocking her left hand, but not only was there no wedding band but there was no tan line from a wedding band either. Not to mention, he was fairly certain married women didn't pretend to be people's girlfriends. Therefore, instead of commenting on the last name issue, he asked the only other question that was cycling through his mind at that moment, "What the hell happened to Broadway?"
Part Two
A/N: I've outlined this. It's for the drabble meme. It'll only be (max) five parts. There will be much more explanation as to how things are different in this AU as it goes through each part. It's like the butterfly effect - Rachel not going to McKinley, Santana not being raised in Lima, etc...seemingly little changes can do a whole lot.
Chapter: One
Characters: Puck/Rachel, Blaine, Finn, Kurt, Santana and various others in unexpected places.
Rating: R
Word Count: ~2500
Genre: Romance, Drama, Future AU
Warnings: Language
Summary: Noah Puckerman is used to being noticed; but when he begins to get the wrong kind of attention his team hires the least likely bodyguard imaginable. Now he has to convince the world that she's his girlfriend without actually falling for her in the process.
Disclaimer: Ryan Murphy, Fox, et al. own Glee. I own nothing (quite literally) and am making absolutely no profit from this endeavor.
Prompt: Puck is a celebrity with a stalker. Rachel is his unlikely bodyguard. -
puckrachel drabble meme (by:
shaesweetie)
------
"Damnit Noah you're being unreasonable!"
"You're not hiring me a bodyguard Santana and that's final," he snapped back, continuing the argument that had been going on for the last week. "I've got a black belt in karate and I'm trained in judo and jujitsu."
"You've also got a psychopath that we know nothing about stalking you. LAPD has no information on them other then the fact that they know where your house is due to the increasingly graphic messages and dead animals that have been arriving for the last two months," she replied, giving him the glare that he was fairly certain was supposed to convey how stupid she thought he was. "I don't give a shit if you are considered the next Steven Segal, only ya know, with actual acting ability."
"Do you know what it would do to my image if I had a body guard following me around? It'll look like I can't take care of myself."
"There won't be a whole lot to take care of if you're dead now will there," Santana continued, "We all agree on this Noah."
Noah groaned and looked around to the faces at the table in the conference room at Creative Arts Agency that his team had taken over for the afternoon. Santana Lopez, his agent and the first person who had taken achance on him when he was twenty-two, new to LA from Ohio and just out of college with only a few university theatre credits on his resume. The last ten years the two of them had essentially built each other's careers as both had been brand new to the business at the time. Finn Hudson, his oldest friend and now publicist had been hired two years later after Noah's first major movie roll, it had only been a co-starring billing but his looks and talent had garnered a buzz and
almost overnight he was the paparazzi's new golden boy. Blaine Anderson, Santana's number two at the agency, Noah's first real friend in LA (resulting in landing Blaine his job) and had been dating his stylist for the last two years. Finally, Kurt Hummel, another friend from Ohio,
Finn's step-brother and if you asked him, "the person who single handedly keeps you off Melissa River's radar during award's season since you keep asking why you can't wear jeans to the Oscars."
"I'm not going to get killed," was all he could think to reply to the four people that were staring at him with increasingly impatient expressions.
"Puck just shut up," Kurt finally snapped, shocking the table because until that point it had only been Santana talking. "Listen up and listen 'cause I'm only going to say this once. You are one of my best friends and I consider you family, listen to the people who you pay to make your life easier and agree to get a fucking bodyguard."
Noah blinked in shock, not at the words (he had known Kurt since he was a kid and had considered him a friend for just about sixteen years) but at the tone. Kurt never told him what to do, unless it had to do with clothing, and in fact more often then not tended to agree with him over the others. The stylist claimed it was because they were both "artists" and "you're my boyfriend's best friend I have to agree with you for the sake of my sex life".
He knew when Kurt snapped that he had lost his argument and glared at the smug looks being passed around the table by the others. Shaking his head in annoyance he finally exhaled and muttered, "Fine."
"Thank God," Finn whispered and Noah immediately felt bad, his friend had been worried the last few months and Noah had just brushed it off. He hadn't been thinking about how this might be effecting the closest people he had to family in California. With his Mom still in Ohio and his sister in Chicago it had been easy to ignore the threat against him. "So, how are we going to do this?"
"I've got an idea," Blaine finally spoke up. "Noah doesn't want this to effect his image and quite frankly we don't want the stalker to get more
dangerous. If the stalker thinks he's still accessible, as it were, then they might step things up. As of right now it's just an obsession, creepy letters detailing how they belong together, so on and so forth."
"You're forgetting about the dead dog on the doorstep," Kurt muttered, looking nauseous. "I'm still disturbed that they got passed the gate on your property," he added, thinking of the house in the Hollywood Hills Noah owned that everyone thought was an unknown location.
"I'm not forgetting that," Blaine replied. "But my point was, what if no one knows you have a bodyguard?"
"And how are they not going to know that?" Santana questioned, looking confused as she glanced up from the list of agency's she had been shoving in Noah's face for over a week.
"Athena Academy," Blaine responded, pushing a sheet of paper across the table to Santana. "Female bodyguards."
"Female?" four voices answered his statement in varying degrees of confusion.
"Yes. I made a call already. I explained the situation and my idea. They agreed with me and even said they had someone specific in mind."
"Okay?" Finn prompted. "What's your idea?"
"Noah Puckerman, serial dater, finally meets a girl who can hold his attention longer then a week."
Noah stared back at Blaine for a few seconds before almost doubling over in laughter; he only laughed harder at the scowl on his friends face. He finally calmed down and explained the reasoning behind his humor, "This is a bodyguard Blaine. Do you really think anyone would believe I'd date a chick that looks like that?"
"Yes," Blaine replied simply and shot him the same smirk Noah himself was known for. "Trust me on this."
Two days later Noah once again found himself sitting in the conference room with his team, only this time they were waiting on another person to join them and Noah had a different ball of dread in his stomach. He was an actor, a damn good one too, but even he didn't know how to be convincing over the fact that he was dating a woman who was a bodyguard. The closest he had ever come was in High School when this chick Lauren something-or-other from the wrestling team had been scarily obsessed with him for two years. He had taken her out once in the beginning of junior year for what he planned as being a horrible date, hoping that she'd decide he was an asshole, and all it had done was make her like him more. Ironically, it hadn't been until three months later when he was forced to participate in the spring play that she had backed off and decided he was a "loser". He'd never been more thankful for getting caught throwing a geek in a dumpster then that year since it resulted in him finding his future profession. That was also the same year that he began to get friendly with Kurt due to the play, resulting in Finn and Kurt meeting on more civil terms, resulting in their parents getting married.
"Okay, so her name is Rachel Adler," Blaine's voice brought Noah back into the discussion that was going on around him. He watched as his friend began to rattle off information from the file open in front of him, "She's also thirty-two. Joined the Department of the Treasury right after finishing her degree in psychology at Georgetown. Two years later she had gained a Masters in Psych, also from Georgetown and was recruited to the Secret Service. Three years on the first daughter's detail, two on the first lady's and then three on the President."
"Wait, I'm going to be protected by someone who was trained to take a bullet for the President of the United States? Isn't that a little extreme?"
"She's not with the Service anymore," Blaine continued as though Noah hadn't spoken. "Well, not really anyway. She was shot in that assassination attempt last year, so not only is she trained to do it but she has done it. She's since taken a leave of absence. She wants to
finish her Ph.D. in criminal psychology and is cleared to work in the private sector while she does that. Any questions?"
"Yea," Noah replied. "Is she hot?"
"I don't know Mr. Puckerman, you tell me," a female voice floated from the doorway and Noah, along with everyone else, turned toward the doorway. When he saw the figure standing there his jaw dropped. "Well, do I pass muster?" she questioned, her voice taking on an amused tone as if she knew exactly how much she passed.
"Holy shit," Santana muttered. "Do you want a job? Fuck Puckerman...I could get you top billing in the next romantic comedy. Wait, can you act?"
"I guess that means I'm hot," was Rachel Adler's only response, even as her eyes never left his.
"Yea, little bit," he agreed quickly, smirking and cursing himself internally for letting her see his shock. "So babe how're we going to do this?"
When he saw her slight eye roll at, he assumed, the use of 'babe' instead of her name he smirked even more. The tiny brunette crossed the room and pulled out the empty chair next to him before sitting down and leaning back in the chair, allowing him to observe her up close.
She was wearing jeans, a long sleeved v-necked shirt, brown boots and a brown leather jacket. He was more then a little shocked, and turned on, to realize as she shifted in the chair that under her jacket was a shoulder holster. Long brown hair was pulled up in a pony tail, the only jewelry she was wearing was a star of david necklace and he could tell she had just a minimal amount of make-up on. He knew in that instant that he was fucked and had to remind himself that he couldn't actually date the woman sitting next to him; even if she did look like a cross between his perfect woman and Lara Croft. And considering he had been in the newest Lara Croft movie a few years earlier he would know. Also, she looked so damned familiar that it was almost overshadowing her extreme hotness.
"Aren't you kind of tiny?" Finn questioned, earning an eye roll from both Rachel and Noah.
The woman was barely over five feet tall, but being highly trained in martial arts himself he could tell she was dangerous just by how she had moved across the room. One thing his training had taught him since he began with karate at seven was that size didn't matter in martial arts. So her stature didn't phase him one instant, like it appeared to have the others.
"Dude, how long have you known me? My sister in her size and has kicked your ass. You should know her height doesn't matter."
"And three days ago you didn't even want a bodyguard," Kurt piped in. "How cute."
"Yea well," Noah responded. "She's hot."
"Eloquent," Blaine interjected with a laugh. "Anyway, Ms. Adler, I believe Noah had a good question. How are we going to do this?"
He watched as Rachel nodded and reached into the bag she had brought with her, pulling out a file and setting it on the table. She shuffled through the papers and only a single glance told him it was a file on his situation, as he could see copies of the letters he received.
"I looked through what I was given and I think you were right to hire a bodyguard. This person believes they essentially own Mr. Puckerman and seeks to fully posesess him. Based on the word choice in the letter I believe it's a woman; which makes hiring me and having me pose as Mr. Puckerman's girlfriend is an ideal situation. It'll throw the stalker off kilter, all they've had to deal with so far is casual dating. A steady girlfriend will hopefully cause them to be thrown off enough to make a mistake. I've already spoken to the lead detective and have given my recommendations on what they should be looking into."
"And, how do you know all this?" Kurt questioned, looking more then a little confused.
"Mr. Anderson has my profile. I'm not just an attractive blunt object Mr. Hummel. I'm ABD in Criminal Psychology. After this job is finished I
just have to teach for a year and defend my dissertation."
"We didn't introduce ourselves," Kurt replied, looking suspicious. "How do we know you aren't the stalker?"
Noah almost laughed when one perfectly manicured eyebrow rose and the woman sitting next to him smirked and responded, "Simple Mr. Hummel. It's my job to know these things. I take my job very, very seriously."
Noah watched as one by one everyone else at the table began to relax slightly. They had all been getting tenser and tenser as the last two
months went on and the stalker seemingly got closer and with the words of one tiny little (and blatantly dangerous) brunette they seemed to
have it lifted off of them. They could now get back to their actual jobs and leave the stalker to his new "girl" and the LAPD.
He decided he'd help them out, "So baby, let's blow this joint, go be seen in public making goo-goo eyes at each other and work out a story."
"Alright," she agreed with a shrug. "As for our story? That's an easy one."
"It is?"
"Wow," Rachel whispered and Noah became even more confused because the brunette actually looked honestly surprised for the first time since she had arrived. She finally shook her head slightly and looked up and him and spoke, "Yes, if anyone asks we're childhood friends who have reconnected."
"Why would you say that?" Santana asked, interjecting herself into the conversation. "Wouldn't that get more confusing since you should know things about each other?"
"Well," Rachel replied. "It's the truth."
And with that statement it all hit him like a ton of bricks, "Holy shit. Rachel Berry."
Standing in front of him was a girl he hadn't seen since the eighth grade when her parents moved away from Lima. She had always gone to a nearby private school, but their parents had been friends from Temple and basically from the second he hit puberty his mother had been on his back for him to date Rachel.
"Got it in one," she responded, chuckling. "I'm guessing the last name threw you off?"
That comment had him quickly clocking her left hand, but not only was there no wedding band but there was no tan line from a wedding band either. Not to mention, he was fairly certain married women didn't pretend to be people's girlfriends. Therefore, instead of commenting on the last name issue, he asked the only other question that was cycling through his mind at that moment, "What the hell happened to Broadway?"
Part Two
A/N: I've outlined this. It's for the drabble meme. It'll only be (max) five parts. There will be much more explanation as to how things are different in this AU as it goes through each part. It's like the butterfly effect - Rachel not going to McKinley, Santana not being raised in Lima, etc...seemingly little changes can do a whole lot.