Rachel/Puck- Thunderstorm
Title: Thunderstorm
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Rachel/Puck
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3, 056
Summary: It's when Rachel comforts their puppy during a storm Puck realizes what he wants out of their relationship.
Author's Notes: Written for this prompt at the puckrachel drabble meme.
They’ve been together for two years and since they got together they haven’t really discussed their future much. It definitely wasn’t something she was used to but was something he was. She knew that she had to stop herself from trying to get him to discuss a possible future if she wanted to be with him. he wouldn’t be an asshole about it and she knew that but she also knew he wasn’t going to be very comfortable with the idea of telling talking about where their lives may go, what their relationship may be right somewhere down the line. He had ideas about what his future may be but he didn’t want to make plans with her, make assumptions. Because if things didn’t work out the way they had wanted? Well, it would just lead to disappointment.
So, they’ve never really discussed where their future together was heading. Instead she just stayed there, stayed with him, accepted their relationship as it was going. And it wasn’t as though their relationship was going badly. It was actually going rather well. She didn’t really need to delve more into it than that. When she was younger she was a lot more determined to talk about things, to plan them, to be sure that she knew exactly where her life was going to end up- or where she planned on having it end up.
It was after high school, after things between herself and Finn finally fizzled out for good that she started to realize that she might not really need to plan things out that much. It didn’t work so well with her for Finn. She had her whole life planned out in her mind. She thought she and Finn would get married young, get an apartment. She thought he’d be there with her for every single second of her career, that they’d have children together and live happily ever after. The perfect little fairytale. And none of that happened so she knew that if she planned things out too much and they didn’t work out she’d just end up disappointed.
She lives in a small but comfortable apartment with him, not exactly in the best, most expensive of neighborhoods but it’s not the worst either. It’s not overly dangerous; it isn’t overly safe. It’s somewhere right down the middle. And it takes a little time sometimes on the trains to get to work but she doesn’t mind. Riding the train is just part of experiencing New York, really and truly experiencing it and not just being in it. And it suits their needs just fine. No one ever said they’d have a gorgeous apartment when she has barely broken out into the world of performing and with him working a regular, blue-collar job.
They picked the apartment together and she set everything up. She did it because Noah didn’t really care whether or not they even had real furniture to fill out the apartment. He only had one rule when it came to most of the setting up of the apartment- no pink. Or at least as little pink as possible. So when she picked out the paint she had to stray as far from the pink tones as she possibly could, just picked out the paint and had him go pick it up, helped him paint the best that she could even though painting most of the rooms fell to him since he was taller and was just better at it than she was.
The painting ended up in a bit of a paint fight. It was an accident at first. He dropped the brush in his hand down into the paint tray so he could step back from the wall and get a better look at how it was coming, watching the crisp white walls getting covered with a pale, pale blue. When he dropped the paintbrush and it hit the wet paint it made it splatter up and hit her bare legs, not having enough in the tray to splatter high enough to hit the shorts she was wearing.
Rachel gasped and looked over at him, her brush still in her hand but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the wall. For a few moments she just stood there gaping at him like she couldn’t believe he would drop the brush down like that. And then, without really considering what she was doing, she reached out and swiped the brush across his cheek painting the normally tanned skin with the pale blue color that was still on it.
He turned his head sharply to look at her, his eyebrows furrowing deeply as he looked at her like he had no idea why she just did that. And she should have felt a tiny bit bad about that, about frustrating him in that way but he just looked so ridiculous with that paint on his face she started laughing. She absolutely couldn’t help herself. And it was just after she started laughing that he seemed to get an idea in his head, leaned down and picked up his own paintbrush, dripped as much paint off of it into the tray as he could and then swiped it against her face.
It turned into a bit of a fight then with the paint. Him swiping at her with the brush, her swiping at him. She giggled and he laughed rather deep in his chest while he looked at her with paint all over her. that night they ended up on the drop sheet there on the floor they had put down to keep the paint from getting on the floor itself, his mouth mashing against hers, tugging their clothes off and thrusting against each other. The paint felt gross against their skin and in her hair by the time everything was said and done- and it took a while to get cleaned off- but it was a nice memory of setting up their apartment.
She picked out the curtains and the dishes and the furniture. He did most of the setting up of the furniture and put together whatever needed to be put together like the entertainment center and the computer table. He didn’t seem to mind setting that all up even in the summer heat and she didn’t mind watching him move around without his shirt on, fixing lemonade in the kitchen for the two of them, listening to the music that she let him pick out. It was so blissfully normal, so oddly intimate that she could have done it over and over again for months.
And for a while they just lived like that- the two of them in their tiny little apartment and their mostly blue walls. She went to her auditions while she tried to get better roles than she had been getting. He went to work at the firehouse, sometimes came home so exhausted that he basically just fell into bed and they couldn’t speak until the next morning when he woke up. She learned to cook just so she could do most of the cooking since he worked such long hours. Sometimes when they were exhausted he got takeout and they just sat in their living room watching movies. She even got him to watch a few musicals with her; he managed to get her to watch the movies he preferred even if during some of the more violent scenes she ended up burying her face against his shoulder so she wouldn’t have to see it on the screen.
They remained like that for a long while, neither of them considering going for more- or less- with their relationship. Everything seemed to be going rather well with them. They barely even fought. Sometimes, of course, they fought about stupid things like any normal couple would. If you didn’t fight then it was because you were avoiding conflict. And if you held everything deep down inside of you, if you didn’t discuss your problems the issues would just end up getting worse and you would explode. And she didn’t want for them to explode.
But after almost two years of dating, after living together for over a year they decided to move forward a little bit but only a little bit. They still weren’t talking about the possibility of a future. They never spoke about where their lives might end up going. It was easier that way. But they were sitting in the living room talking one day while watching television, her body snuggled up against his, her legs thrown over his, his fingers lazily running through her hair as their eyes remained on the television screen. And as if out of nowhere, in the most logical of voices she just blurted out, “We should get a puppy.”
Before that moment she hadn’t really considered even coming up with the idea of them getting a pet. And at first she had to admit she really would have thought if she ever got a pet she would want to get a cat. She wasn’t even sure why that was. She just knew she was more of a cat person than she was a dog person. But yet she knew he was more of a dog person than he was a cat person. And so she sort of knew he would rather have a dog than a cat. And it wasn’t like she didn’t like dogs because she did.
Puck looked down at her with both of his eyebrows raised in question. He obviously didn’t expect for her to say that, for her to suggest they get a pet together because when you really thought about it getting a pet together was a rather big deal. It wasn’t exactly simple by any means. It meant something. It meant that they were going to try to make things work for a while longer- at least if they agreed to get the pet together.
So, for a little while they just sat there with him looking at her, while she tried to wonder if she should just tell him to forget about it, to insist that it was a silly idea. But then a sort of slow smile started to spread across his face. He smiled at her and kissed her temple, told her that would be cool, that they should go and get a puppy to keep them company in the apartment. He only insisted they didn’t get one of those tiny, annoyingly yappy little dogs that could drive people crazy. She just said she didn’t want a dog that would outweigh her two-to-one when it was full-grown. And he could understand that.
She insisted that they get their dog from a rescue group rather than buying him from a pet store and so the two of them went to pick out a dog. They were there for a long while, looked at every single one of the puppies as thoroughly as they possibly could so that they could decide which one they wanted the most. And then Rachel found this dog that sort of made her heart melt. She turned her head as they were looking at the canines and she just sort of knew she found the dog that they should get.
She stepped away from him, headed over and crouched down in front of one of the cages the group was keeping animals in. She crouched down and stuck her finger through the bars of the cage. And the little dog inside moved right over to her, nudged at her hand with his nose and then started to chew on the tip of her finger. And the second that little puppy did that her heart melted. That little golden retriever and chocolate lab mix was just the cutest thing she had ever seen in her life.
When Puck got over to her she looked up at him, her eyes sort of wide like the puppy’s, her bottom lip jutting out as she watched him. “She’s so cute,” she whispered to him, the little puppy still nibbling on the tip of her finger. “Look at him, Noah. She’s so cute.”
Puck sort of rolled his eyes a little bit at the way she was cooing over the dog but stuck one a finger into the cage. The puppy turned his head slightly to look over at him, sniffed at his finger and then started to nibble on it the same way she had been nibbling on Rachel’s finger. He tried not to smile, he really did and Rachel could tell he was trying not to smile but the corners of his mouth started to turn up into a smile and Rachel knew his heart was melting the same way that hers had. It was amazing to her how easily that little dog could make her heart melt- and even more surprising how quickly she made Puck’s heart melt.
When Puck looked back at her she knew right away that they were going to end up getting that little puppy.
Three weeks later and their puppy is settling in rather well to the apartment. She likes to curl up on the foot of their bed, likes to sit with her head in either of their laps when they’re sitting on the couch. Rachel even managed to get him to agree to her naming the puppy Cosette though he isn’t sure how she managed to convince him. And despite himself Puck sort of adored that little caramel colored puppy that would scamper around the apartment and let out those tiny little barks when he walked in the door. That little dog that had been abandoned because the woman who owned the puppy’s mother couldn’t keep the babies.
There’s a big storm ripping through the city that night. The rain is falling down so hard and the wind is blowing so strongly that it makes the raindrops hit against the window like little pebbles. The sound itself is rather soothing while the two of them sit there on the couch, the puppy’s head in Puck’s lap. It’s a rather nice way to spend the evening when he thought about it. But then this huge thunder clap made the windows shake and Cosette’s head popped up before she took off running, jumped right off of the couch so she could go hide in the bedroom.
Rachel sits up and looks in the direction of the bedroom, then looks back at Puck, her bottom lip jutting out into a bit of a pout over the way the dog went running off like that. She untangles herself from his arms and then heads into the bedroom to look go after the dog. She steps into the bedroom and crouches down on the floor to look under the bed, reaches out with both hands to grip the dog as gently as she can, pulls her out from under the bed.
Cosette whimpers a bit, her body shaking from fear. Evidently she doesn’t approve of the sound of thunder.
Cradling the little puppy close to her chest Rachel runs a hand over her head, presses a kiss between her ears. She carries the little dog back into the living room, trying her best the whole time to calm her down, her nose pressed against the dog’s fur as she nuzzles the top of her head to try to get her to relax. “Don’t worry,” she mutters to the dog as she sits back down on the couch. “Mommy is here.”
Puck watches her coddling the little dog, watches her trying to comfort her best that she can and it sort of stuns him for a moment. He just watches her as she babies that little dog, tries to calm Cosette down as much as she possibly can. And in that moment it strikes him that Rachel could make a good mother one day. If she can take care of a dog that way, truly treats it like her own child he can only imagine how amazing she would be with a child of her own.
And in that moment as he watches her with that dog cuddled up in her arms it strikes him that if he’s going to have a baby that he actually gets to raise instead of giving the baby up he would want her to be the mother. He had never really thought about it before. He knew that he could possibly want to be a father one day but he had never really considered wanting to have children with Rachel. But watching her baby that little dog makes him change his mind just a little bit, makes him imagine her rocking a little baby in her arms, singing to her, smiling if the baby smiled or cooed. It’s an image he never, ever had before. But it’s an image she can’t help but like.
Once Cosette has calmed down Rachel releases her hold on the dog and the little thing hops down off of the couch, moves over to sit down on the chair on the other side of the room. Rachel watches the puppy, smiles when she realizes that the dog is doing much better than she had been a moment before. That smile still on her face she cuddles up against Puck, slips her arms around his waist to hold him close to her.
He slides an arm around her shoulders, leans down to kiss the top of her head, and lets his gaze fall on the puppy for a few moments. Yeah, having that dog is really nice. And he likes having her around. But at the end of the day he thinks that it would be really nice to have a baby with Rachel, that he wouldn’t pick anyone else to be the mother of his children. And maybe he should bring it up to her but they just seem so happy and so calm in that moment it feels a little silly to break that calm by bringing that up.
He’ll save that conversation for another day. Maybe one night over takeout from her favorite place.
Doesn’t hurt to spoil her a little when bringing up the possibility of them having a baby together one day.
Who says he hasn’t learned shit in his life?
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Rachel/Puck
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3, 056
Summary: It's when Rachel comforts their puppy during a storm Puck realizes what he wants out of their relationship.
Author's Notes: Written for this prompt at the puckrachel drabble meme.
They’ve been together for two years and since they got together they haven’t really discussed their future much. It definitely wasn’t something she was used to but was something he was. She knew that she had to stop herself from trying to get him to discuss a possible future if she wanted to be with him. he wouldn’t be an asshole about it and she knew that but she also knew he wasn’t going to be very comfortable with the idea of telling talking about where their lives may go, what their relationship may be right somewhere down the line. He had ideas about what his future may be but he didn’t want to make plans with her, make assumptions. Because if things didn’t work out the way they had wanted? Well, it would just lead to disappointment.
So, they’ve never really discussed where their future together was heading. Instead she just stayed there, stayed with him, accepted their relationship as it was going. And it wasn’t as though their relationship was going badly. It was actually going rather well. She didn’t really need to delve more into it than that. When she was younger she was a lot more determined to talk about things, to plan them, to be sure that she knew exactly where her life was going to end up- or where she planned on having it end up.
It was after high school, after things between herself and Finn finally fizzled out for good that she started to realize that she might not really need to plan things out that much. It didn’t work so well with her for Finn. She had her whole life planned out in her mind. She thought she and Finn would get married young, get an apartment. She thought he’d be there with her for every single second of her career, that they’d have children together and live happily ever after. The perfect little fairytale. And none of that happened so she knew that if she planned things out too much and they didn’t work out she’d just end up disappointed.
She lives in a small but comfortable apartment with him, not exactly in the best, most expensive of neighborhoods but it’s not the worst either. It’s not overly dangerous; it isn’t overly safe. It’s somewhere right down the middle. And it takes a little time sometimes on the trains to get to work but she doesn’t mind. Riding the train is just part of experiencing New York, really and truly experiencing it and not just being in it. And it suits their needs just fine. No one ever said they’d have a gorgeous apartment when she has barely broken out into the world of performing and with him working a regular, blue-collar job.
They picked the apartment together and she set everything up. She did it because Noah didn’t really care whether or not they even had real furniture to fill out the apartment. He only had one rule when it came to most of the setting up of the apartment- no pink. Or at least as little pink as possible. So when she picked out the paint she had to stray as far from the pink tones as she possibly could, just picked out the paint and had him go pick it up, helped him paint the best that she could even though painting most of the rooms fell to him since he was taller and was just better at it than she was.
The painting ended up in a bit of a paint fight. It was an accident at first. He dropped the brush in his hand down into the paint tray so he could step back from the wall and get a better look at how it was coming, watching the crisp white walls getting covered with a pale, pale blue. When he dropped the paintbrush and it hit the wet paint it made it splatter up and hit her bare legs, not having enough in the tray to splatter high enough to hit the shorts she was wearing.
Rachel gasped and looked over at him, her brush still in her hand but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the wall. For a few moments she just stood there gaping at him like she couldn’t believe he would drop the brush down like that. And then, without really considering what she was doing, she reached out and swiped the brush across his cheek painting the normally tanned skin with the pale blue color that was still on it.
He turned his head sharply to look at her, his eyebrows furrowing deeply as he looked at her like he had no idea why she just did that. And she should have felt a tiny bit bad about that, about frustrating him in that way but he just looked so ridiculous with that paint on his face she started laughing. She absolutely couldn’t help herself. And it was just after she started laughing that he seemed to get an idea in his head, leaned down and picked up his own paintbrush, dripped as much paint off of it into the tray as he could and then swiped it against her face.
It turned into a bit of a fight then with the paint. Him swiping at her with the brush, her swiping at him. She giggled and he laughed rather deep in his chest while he looked at her with paint all over her. that night they ended up on the drop sheet there on the floor they had put down to keep the paint from getting on the floor itself, his mouth mashing against hers, tugging their clothes off and thrusting against each other. The paint felt gross against their skin and in her hair by the time everything was said and done- and it took a while to get cleaned off- but it was a nice memory of setting up their apartment.
She picked out the curtains and the dishes and the furniture. He did most of the setting up of the furniture and put together whatever needed to be put together like the entertainment center and the computer table. He didn’t seem to mind setting that all up even in the summer heat and she didn’t mind watching him move around without his shirt on, fixing lemonade in the kitchen for the two of them, listening to the music that she let him pick out. It was so blissfully normal, so oddly intimate that she could have done it over and over again for months.
And for a while they just lived like that- the two of them in their tiny little apartment and their mostly blue walls. She went to her auditions while she tried to get better roles than she had been getting. He went to work at the firehouse, sometimes came home so exhausted that he basically just fell into bed and they couldn’t speak until the next morning when he woke up. She learned to cook just so she could do most of the cooking since he worked such long hours. Sometimes when they were exhausted he got takeout and they just sat in their living room watching movies. She even got him to watch a few musicals with her; he managed to get her to watch the movies he preferred even if during some of the more violent scenes she ended up burying her face against his shoulder so she wouldn’t have to see it on the screen.
They remained like that for a long while, neither of them considering going for more- or less- with their relationship. Everything seemed to be going rather well with them. They barely even fought. Sometimes, of course, they fought about stupid things like any normal couple would. If you didn’t fight then it was because you were avoiding conflict. And if you held everything deep down inside of you, if you didn’t discuss your problems the issues would just end up getting worse and you would explode. And she didn’t want for them to explode.
But after almost two years of dating, after living together for over a year they decided to move forward a little bit but only a little bit. They still weren’t talking about the possibility of a future. They never spoke about where their lives might end up going. It was easier that way. But they were sitting in the living room talking one day while watching television, her body snuggled up against his, her legs thrown over his, his fingers lazily running through her hair as their eyes remained on the television screen. And as if out of nowhere, in the most logical of voices she just blurted out, “We should get a puppy.”
Before that moment she hadn’t really considered even coming up with the idea of them getting a pet. And at first she had to admit she really would have thought if she ever got a pet she would want to get a cat. She wasn’t even sure why that was. She just knew she was more of a cat person than she was a dog person. But yet she knew he was more of a dog person than he was a cat person. And so she sort of knew he would rather have a dog than a cat. And it wasn’t like she didn’t like dogs because she did.
Puck looked down at her with both of his eyebrows raised in question. He obviously didn’t expect for her to say that, for her to suggest they get a pet together because when you really thought about it getting a pet together was a rather big deal. It wasn’t exactly simple by any means. It meant something. It meant that they were going to try to make things work for a while longer- at least if they agreed to get the pet together.
So, for a little while they just sat there with him looking at her, while she tried to wonder if she should just tell him to forget about it, to insist that it was a silly idea. But then a sort of slow smile started to spread across his face. He smiled at her and kissed her temple, told her that would be cool, that they should go and get a puppy to keep them company in the apartment. He only insisted they didn’t get one of those tiny, annoyingly yappy little dogs that could drive people crazy. She just said she didn’t want a dog that would outweigh her two-to-one when it was full-grown. And he could understand that.
She insisted that they get their dog from a rescue group rather than buying him from a pet store and so the two of them went to pick out a dog. They were there for a long while, looked at every single one of the puppies as thoroughly as they possibly could so that they could decide which one they wanted the most. And then Rachel found this dog that sort of made her heart melt. She turned her head as they were looking at the canines and she just sort of knew she found the dog that they should get.
She stepped away from him, headed over and crouched down in front of one of the cages the group was keeping animals in. She crouched down and stuck her finger through the bars of the cage. And the little dog inside moved right over to her, nudged at her hand with his nose and then started to chew on the tip of her finger. And the second that little puppy did that her heart melted. That little golden retriever and chocolate lab mix was just the cutest thing she had ever seen in her life.
When Puck got over to her she looked up at him, her eyes sort of wide like the puppy’s, her bottom lip jutting out as she watched him. “She’s so cute,” she whispered to him, the little puppy still nibbling on the tip of her finger. “Look at him, Noah. She’s so cute.”
Puck sort of rolled his eyes a little bit at the way she was cooing over the dog but stuck one a finger into the cage. The puppy turned his head slightly to look over at him, sniffed at his finger and then started to nibble on it the same way she had been nibbling on Rachel’s finger. He tried not to smile, he really did and Rachel could tell he was trying not to smile but the corners of his mouth started to turn up into a smile and Rachel knew his heart was melting the same way that hers had. It was amazing to her how easily that little dog could make her heart melt- and even more surprising how quickly she made Puck’s heart melt.
When Puck looked back at her she knew right away that they were going to end up getting that little puppy.
Three weeks later and their puppy is settling in rather well to the apartment. She likes to curl up on the foot of their bed, likes to sit with her head in either of their laps when they’re sitting on the couch. Rachel even managed to get him to agree to her naming the puppy Cosette though he isn’t sure how she managed to convince him. And despite himself Puck sort of adored that little caramel colored puppy that would scamper around the apartment and let out those tiny little barks when he walked in the door. That little dog that had been abandoned because the woman who owned the puppy’s mother couldn’t keep the babies.
There’s a big storm ripping through the city that night. The rain is falling down so hard and the wind is blowing so strongly that it makes the raindrops hit against the window like little pebbles. The sound itself is rather soothing while the two of them sit there on the couch, the puppy’s head in Puck’s lap. It’s a rather nice way to spend the evening when he thought about it. But then this huge thunder clap made the windows shake and Cosette’s head popped up before she took off running, jumped right off of the couch so she could go hide in the bedroom.
Rachel sits up and looks in the direction of the bedroom, then looks back at Puck, her bottom lip jutting out into a bit of a pout over the way the dog went running off like that. She untangles herself from his arms and then heads into the bedroom to look go after the dog. She steps into the bedroom and crouches down on the floor to look under the bed, reaches out with both hands to grip the dog as gently as she can, pulls her out from under the bed.
Cosette whimpers a bit, her body shaking from fear. Evidently she doesn’t approve of the sound of thunder.
Cradling the little puppy close to her chest Rachel runs a hand over her head, presses a kiss between her ears. She carries the little dog back into the living room, trying her best the whole time to calm her down, her nose pressed against the dog’s fur as she nuzzles the top of her head to try to get her to relax. “Don’t worry,” she mutters to the dog as she sits back down on the couch. “Mommy is here.”
Puck watches her coddling the little dog, watches her trying to comfort her best that she can and it sort of stuns him for a moment. He just watches her as she babies that little dog, tries to calm Cosette down as much as she possibly can. And in that moment it strikes him that Rachel could make a good mother one day. If she can take care of a dog that way, truly treats it like her own child he can only imagine how amazing she would be with a child of her own.
And in that moment as he watches her with that dog cuddled up in her arms it strikes him that if he’s going to have a baby that he actually gets to raise instead of giving the baby up he would want her to be the mother. He had never really thought about it before. He knew that he could possibly want to be a father one day but he had never really considered wanting to have children with Rachel. But watching her baby that little dog makes him change his mind just a little bit, makes him imagine her rocking a little baby in her arms, singing to her, smiling if the baby smiled or cooed. It’s an image he never, ever had before. But it’s an image she can’t help but like.
Once Cosette has calmed down Rachel releases her hold on the dog and the little thing hops down off of the couch, moves over to sit down on the chair on the other side of the room. Rachel watches the puppy, smiles when she realizes that the dog is doing much better than she had been a moment before. That smile still on her face she cuddles up against Puck, slips her arms around his waist to hold him close to her.
He slides an arm around her shoulders, leans down to kiss the top of her head, and lets his gaze fall on the puppy for a few moments. Yeah, having that dog is really nice. And he likes having her around. But at the end of the day he thinks that it would be really nice to have a baby with Rachel, that he wouldn’t pick anyone else to be the mother of his children. And maybe he should bring it up to her but they just seem so happy and so calm in that moment it feels a little silly to break that calm by bringing that up.
He’ll save that conversation for another day. Maybe one night over takeout from her favorite place.
Doesn’t hurt to spoil her a little when bringing up the possibility of them having a baby together one day.
Who says he hasn’t learned shit in his life?