Glee: Heart and Souls [2/?] (Puck, Rachel)
Title: Heart and Soul [Chapter 1]
Author: diamondinsanity
Pairing,Character(s): Rachel, Puck
Rating: R (for language only)
Word Count: 3060
Spoilers: None. Completely and utterly AU.
Summary: Seventeen year old Rachel Berry was on her way to becoming a Broadway star when she died at the exact same time Noah Puckerman was born. And so instead of moving on, she's stuck haunting the boy she died trying to help.
Notes: The idea for this is loosely based off the movie Heart and Souls, which is also where the title comes from. If you haven’t seen Heart and Souls, I completely recommend watching it (but you don't need to see it to understand this fic. I just borrow the basic idea of it). Robert Downey Jr. is AMAZING in it. I also borrow a little bit from Drop Dead Fred, and will eventually be borrowing a little bit from Ghost. Oh, and the rating has been moved up just because my version of Puck has a bit of a potty mouth...
Disclaimers: I do not own Glee, and I do not own Rent, and I sure as hell do not own Heart and Souls, Drop Dead Fred, or Ghost. I just love them all and decided to bend them all to my will. And sadly I don’t own Anthony Rapp or Mark Salling either.
Previous Parts: Prologue
Present Day
The guidance counselor’s office made Noah Puckerman yearn for the days when he’d been constantly shuffled from psychiatrist from psychiatrist. Every time he met with this doctor, or that psychologist he found their offices all looked pretty similar. You know, walls painted some calm, soothing color, framed degrees on the walls, weird toys sitting around, like stress balls and wooden puzzle blocks. One time there had even been a creepy doll looking head that the therapist had put on top of the desk and told him to imagine it was his “imaginary friend.”
Fuck. If only she were imaginary, that would be the end of all his problems. Hell, she was the reason why she was in this freaky chick’s office to begin with. This was all Rachel Berry’s fault, but he didn’t want to think about her right now. Instead, he forced himself to think about how uncomfortable Emma Pillsbury’s office made him feel.
What made the school think that it would be a good idea to give the guidance counselor the glass walled office? It made this whole situation worse than it already was. Dude, what if another member of the football team walked by and saw him talking to her? Sure, he knew he was a stud, and that the football team would suck even harder than it already did without him, but he didn’t want them knowing his business. He’d worked very hard over the years to hide the fact he’d been sent to numerous shrinks by his mother because according to the doctors he had paranoid schizophrenia. Apparently, talking to yourself and then trying to convince people it was just the ghost who won’t leave you alone because she’s an annoying little freak wasn’t normal. It made you schizophrenic, obviously, despite the fact he totally wasn’t crazy.
He was just cursed. Yeah, that was a good way to describe his relationship with Rachel. He was cursed, and he worked really hard to make sure that no one else figured out about her again. After all, he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. He’d told his best friend, Finn, who told his mom, which had gotten him locked up at the age of twelve for two months. No way in hell was he going to make that mistake again. So, he worked really hard at making sure no one knew about Rachel, which was why he’d given up on homework. Having Rachel in his life was a full-time job.
Once again, he pushed the Rachel related thoughts out of his mind, as well as trying to forget that he pretty much was sitting in a fishbowl of an office where all of William McKinley High School could see him if they really wanted to. What? Had Figgins cut the remodeling budget forcing them to forgo walls in here? It was making him uncomfortable and he was starting to use Rachel words in his head again.
Quickly he forced himself not to think, and instead focused on the pamphlets sitting behind the woman. Ouch! That Stings? He blinked. What stung exactly?
His eyes moved to the one next to it. Divorce: Why Your Parents Stopped Loving You. Shit. She gave these things out to kids? Damn, she was the worst counselor he’d met with so far, and that was saying a lot. He’d had a lot of weird counselors.
I Can’t Stop Touching Myself. Now, that one sounded like a personal problem to him. Did this lady really talk about this shit? What the fuck? And more importantly, where the hell did this lady get all these pamphlets from? Did she have them custom made?
Radon: The Silent Killer. That one made him snicker slightly, and he didn’t even know what radon was. But he did know that he kind of wanted to steal that one and read it to Rachel, if only to piss her off. Apparently pointing out to a ghost all the other ways she could have died was a really shitty thing to do. Who knew?
He didn’t get to read the title of the next one, because suddenly, the counselor was looking right at him, and it completely claimed his attention. Immediately he didn’t like the way she was looking at him. There was something wrong about it, and he knew all about wrong. He was currently having an affair with three different cougars, if only to embarrass Rachel. She was also the reason why he’d shaved his hair into a Mohawk. Everything in his life revolved around the best way to annoy the reason he was sitting in this office. Freaking Rachel Berry.
“Noah,” Miss Pillsbury began, still looking at him with that strange look on her face. “Do you know why I called you in here today?
“Puck.” He instantly corrected the counselor. As long as he was in here, she might as well get his name right at least.
She blinked at him for a moment, looking rather confused with his sudden interjection. “I’m sorry?” She asked, the strange look immediately gone.
“The only people who call me Noah are my mom and Ber-” He caught himself just in time from admitting to a counselor that a dead girl named Rachel talked to him. Yeah, the last thing he needed was to be carted off to the hospital and shot up with clozapine or thorazine. Been there, done that, and it wasn’t as fun as it looked in the movies. “Barbara, my sister.”
Miss Pillsbury looked confused again and glanced down at his file. “It says here that your sister’s name is Sarah…” She said slowly, looking as though she were wondering if she misread the file.
“It is.” Puck told her casually. “But she’s going through a Barbara Streisand phase and makes us all call her Barbara.” Since Finn screwed him over all those years ago, he’d since learned how to lie, and how to lie well. Lying and crime were his two best skills now because of that.
She looked appeased with his answer. “Alright, Puck.” She made a slight face as she said his name, but continued on with her line of questioning nonetheless. “Do you know why I called you in here today?”
He looked thoughtful for a moment as he pretended to think about it. Oh, he had a very good idea why she’d called him in here today, and he would bet money that it had something to do with a ghost named Rachel Berry. But he wasn’t going to admit to talking to a ghost to the deer-eyed woman with the weird pamphlets. “For trying to have sex with Santana Lopez under the bleachers?” He asked in his best, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about’ voice. It was something he’d perfected over the years.
“No.” Miss Pillsbury said seriously, and it looked as though she had more to say, but Puck really didn’t give her that chance.
“For skipping math class again?” He tried, honestly hoping that if he pissed her off enough, she would forget the real reason why she’d called him in here and kick him out of her office.
“No.” And once again she tried to say more, but he didn’t let her.
“For throwing that gay kid in the dumpster?”
Miss Pillsbury took a deep breath, looking flustered by all the things he’d admitted to. “Please stop guessing.” She begged him before glancing down at his file and then back up at him. “Noah. I mean, Puck, I know you know why I called you in here. Mr. Schuester knows you saw him yesterday.”
Puck sighed and slouched down into his chair. How the hell was he going to get himself out of this one? There were only so many times he could get out of talking to himself in public before he got himself institutionalized again. He didn’t need this. Not now. He could already hear the conversation with the doctors.
Now, Noah, why aren’t you getting better?
Because he’s not ill. And this societal need to impose rules and regulations upon speech and beliefs is completely ridiculous. I could report you. My dads are gay. I know some lawyers who would be appalled at Noah’s treatment here.
He can’t hear you, Berry!
What was that Noah?
He pushed the hallucination to the back of his mind and instead forced himself to focus on how to get Miss Pillsbury to drop this. His first thought was to try to seduce her, but she didn’t look like the type, which left him trying to figure out something that wasn’t as easy. Shit.
“Mr. Schuester said he heard you talking to yourself in his classroom. He said you’ve been doing that a lot lately. Actually… A lot of teachers have mentioned that they’ve seen you talking to yourself. And I took a look at your file, and-”
“You can’t do that!” He tried to interject, slightly pissed at himself for letting it slip how much this bothered him. God, if it got out that he spent time in the nuthouse, simple high school hazing would be the least of his concerns.
“Noah,” She began in a lecture sounding voice, completely ignoring the fact that he’d specifically asked her not to call him Noah. It reminded him of the doctors he’d been forced to visit as a kid. “You’ve been hospitalized six times for hallucinations.” Her lips pressed into a line, and she looked distressed for a moment. “And I don’t think I have a pamphlet for you if you’re suffering from hallucinations again…”
He sighed in frustration at the counselor who wasn’t guiding him as well as the name suggested. What was with that anyway? “My best friend was a ghost.” He deadpanned to her. “I had a complicated childhood. It’s no big whoop or anything, Miss P. I’m cured. It’s a miracle. Hallelujah.”
Blinking in complete confusion, Miss Pillsbury looked like she didn’t quite know how to respond to him. Her mouth opened, and then closed. It opened, and then closed again. She honestly didn’t know what to say to him, and he could tell. This was his perfect opportunity to get the hell out of here. He just had to figure out how. Puck glanced helplessly around the fishbowl room as he tried to think.
What would Berry do?
Then it hit him. What would Berry do! God, he’d only spent his entire childhood with the crazy bitch. He knew all the fucking words to Rent before he knew his ABCs for Christ’s sake. Why hadn’t he thought of thinking like her before?
“I was running lines for a play.” He announced, shooting the counselor his best ‘are you really that much of an idiot? Thinking I was talking to myself? Please’ look that Rachel had coached him on after Finn had gotten him into all that trouble.
She blinked for a moment, and stared thoughtfully at him. “What?” She asked sounding very confused about the whole situation.
Quickly Puck racked his mind for what play he could have been possibly running lines for. What had Mr. Schue walked in on yesterday? He couldn’t exactly remember. All he knew was that he’d been in an empty classroom and Rachel had been bitching at him because he wouldn’t sign up for choir. Why the fuck would he want to be in a choir class for anyway? He was a stud, and a football player. Not a choir fairy. Just because she missed singing in an ensemble didn’t mean he was going to join a group of gay boys and ugly, fat chicks just so she could feel better about her life. And maybe, just maybe, he’d started singing Rent at her just because he knew how much it pissed her off…
“I’m planning on auditioning for Rent up in Columbus.” He lied, feeling proud with himself for coming up with somewhat of a plausible lie. Shit. He didn’t even care right now how believable the lie was. He just needed to get as far as possible away from the freaky counselor as possible.
Thankfully the bell rang then, and Puck jumped to his feet immediately. “Gotta go. Bye.” And with that he literally bolted from the office. He couldn’t do this anymore. He swore that covering up for the fact that he had an annoying ghost for a freaky pet was going to actually drive him crazy one of these days. This meant one thing and one thing only: he really needed to get rid of Rachel Berry before she made his life more of a living hell than it already was.
Instead of going to class, he went to the boys’ bathroom, desperate to do anything to avoid class. Even though he didn’t want to think about it that counselor had really freaked him out. He couldn’t go through his whole life trying to hide the existence of Rachel from everyone he met. Maybe if he ignored her for awhile, she’d get the hint and stop haunting him. She couldn’t literally recite every musical from memory like she’d threatened the last time he tried it, could she?
The thoughts were pushed from his mind, and he busied himself at the urinal. He’d take a leak and then he’d spend the rest of the afternoon sleeping off his conversation with Miss Pillsbury in the nurse’s office. It sounded like a reasonable plan. Or at least that’s what he was thinking as he stared blankly at the wall in front of him.
“So? What did she want?”
Puck jumped nearly a foot in the air at the voice. “Holy shit, Berry!” He complained, his distraction causing him to accidentally spray the wall instead of the urinal for a moment. “Don’t do that!” And he quickly finished peeing, and zipped his pants back up. “Haven’t we had the ‘boys bathrooms are off limits’ talk already this week?” He checked the stalls to make sure they were alone in the bathroom. An audience was the last thing he needed at the moment. “And dude, you can’t keep talking to me at school.”
Rachel gave him a slight shrug, idly picking at the light pink sweater she’d died in seventeen years prior. Everything he just said, she’d heard before and she had a peculiar way of just ignoring the things she didn’t really want to hear. “Is that why you were called in during your history class?” She suddenly looked proud about something. “Which I stayed and listened to the rest of. Nixon was a very intriguing man. I paid close attention to the lecture, and I’ll dictate the notes to you later this evening.”
Of course. He stops doing homework because of her, and she comes up with new ways to force him into doing his homework.
She stared pointedly at him for a moment. “Aren’t you going to wash your hands?” She waited until he started grumbling at her, and washed his hands before asking again, “What did she want?”
“To know if I was going to go psycho and start killing people.”
The ghost’s gaze narrowed as she stared at him. “Noah Puckerman!” She scolded. “What did she really want?”
“To know if I was crazy again because no one else can hear you!” He yelled at her, feeling the frustration that accompanied spending time with her, washing over him. “You can’t keep popping up at school all the time. Go to the place where all the fucking ghosts go to pass their time and leave me alone!”
Rachel’s face fell as she stared at him. “But I thought you like having me around. I give you the answers to your exams since you insist on not studying.” Her lip trembled for a moment. “I thought I was helping you.”
Puck took a deep breath, and reminded himself that he could not strangle Rachel because she wasn’t real. Well… She was real. At least she was real in theory… “Talking to me, and causing scenes when I’m hanging with my friends is not helping, Berry.”
Her eyes flashed dangerously for a moment. “Hanging?” She asked him incredulously. “You were nailing someone’s lawn furniture to their roof! Excuse me for not wanting you to engage in such a juvenile, not to mention completely rude, activity.”
“You’re making my life impossible!” He snapped, scrubbing his hands over his face.
She threw her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t see how…” She cocked her head to the side, as though she were thinking about the ways she made Puck’s life worse. Frankly, she thought he was blessed to have her in his life. Otherwise he’d be failing school. Who else would sing at him nonstop until he got out of bed, and who would help him cheat through his classes even though it was completely immoral? He needed her to survive; he just didn’t see things the same way that she did.
Noah groaned in frustration before shooting her a look. “Alright. Let me spell it out for you.” He said slowly. “You are dead. No one else can see you. And no one else can hear you. When you pull stunts like this at school, people think I’m talking to myself, and they want to take me away in a straight jacket.” He glared at her. “Again.”
“Once.” Rachel said dismissively. “That happened once.”
“And I had to switch schools six times because of you.”
“And what does that have to do with me, Noah?” Rachel asked him innocently. “You asked to switch schools all those times because you thought your peers were talking badly about you behind your back, and you aren’t as secure in your manliness as you were trying to prove to that horrible girl you’ve been trying to court for the past couple of weeks.” She shot him a defiant look. “I’m only helping you.”
“Well, don’t.” He snapped, completely frustrated with his resident ghost before storming out of the bathroom, and knocking over an incoming freshman in the process.
Rachel sighed as she watched him leave “But it’s my job!” She screamed out after him, knowing very well he could still hear her. “I don’t have a choice. We’re stuck with each other!”
Puck froze in the middle of the mostly empty hallway before responding lowly, “Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
Author: diamondinsanity
Pairing,Character(s): Rachel, Puck
Rating: R (for language only)
Word Count: 3060
Spoilers: None. Completely and utterly AU.
Summary: Seventeen year old Rachel Berry was on her way to becoming a Broadway star when she died at the exact same time Noah Puckerman was born. And so instead of moving on, she's stuck haunting the boy she died trying to help.
Notes: The idea for this is loosely based off the movie Heart and Souls, which is also where the title comes from. If you haven’t seen Heart and Souls, I completely recommend watching it (but you don't need to see it to understand this fic. I just borrow the basic idea of it). Robert Downey Jr. is AMAZING in it. I also borrow a little bit from Drop Dead Fred, and will eventually be borrowing a little bit from Ghost. Oh, and the rating has been moved up just because my version of Puck has a bit of a potty mouth...
Disclaimers: I do not own Glee, and I do not own Rent, and I sure as hell do not own Heart and Souls, Drop Dead Fred, or Ghost. I just love them all and decided to bend them all to my will. And sadly I don’t own Anthony Rapp or Mark Salling either.
Previous Parts: Prologue
Present Day
The guidance counselor’s office made Noah Puckerman yearn for the days when he’d been constantly shuffled from psychiatrist from psychiatrist. Every time he met with this doctor, or that psychologist he found their offices all looked pretty similar. You know, walls painted some calm, soothing color, framed degrees on the walls, weird toys sitting around, like stress balls and wooden puzzle blocks. One time there had even been a creepy doll looking head that the therapist had put on top of the desk and told him to imagine it was his “imaginary friend.”
Fuck. If only she were imaginary, that would be the end of all his problems. Hell, she was the reason why she was in this freaky chick’s office to begin with. This was all Rachel Berry’s fault, but he didn’t want to think about her right now. Instead, he forced himself to think about how uncomfortable Emma Pillsbury’s office made him feel.
What made the school think that it would be a good idea to give the guidance counselor the glass walled office? It made this whole situation worse than it already was. Dude, what if another member of the football team walked by and saw him talking to her? Sure, he knew he was a stud, and that the football team would suck even harder than it already did without him, but he didn’t want them knowing his business. He’d worked very hard over the years to hide the fact he’d been sent to numerous shrinks by his mother because according to the doctors he had paranoid schizophrenia. Apparently, talking to yourself and then trying to convince people it was just the ghost who won’t leave you alone because she’s an annoying little freak wasn’t normal. It made you schizophrenic, obviously, despite the fact he totally wasn’t crazy.
He was just cursed. Yeah, that was a good way to describe his relationship with Rachel. He was cursed, and he worked really hard to make sure that no one else figured out about her again. After all, he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. He’d told his best friend, Finn, who told his mom, which had gotten him locked up at the age of twelve for two months. No way in hell was he going to make that mistake again. So, he worked really hard at making sure no one knew about Rachel, which was why he’d given up on homework. Having Rachel in his life was a full-time job.
Once again, he pushed the Rachel related thoughts out of his mind, as well as trying to forget that he pretty much was sitting in a fishbowl of an office where all of William McKinley High School could see him if they really wanted to. What? Had Figgins cut the remodeling budget forcing them to forgo walls in here? It was making him uncomfortable and he was starting to use Rachel words in his head again.
Quickly he forced himself not to think, and instead focused on the pamphlets sitting behind the woman. Ouch! That Stings? He blinked. What stung exactly?
His eyes moved to the one next to it. Divorce: Why Your Parents Stopped Loving You. Shit. She gave these things out to kids? Damn, she was the worst counselor he’d met with so far, and that was saying a lot. He’d had a lot of weird counselors.
I Can’t Stop Touching Myself. Now, that one sounded like a personal problem to him. Did this lady really talk about this shit? What the fuck? And more importantly, where the hell did this lady get all these pamphlets from? Did she have them custom made?
Radon: The Silent Killer. That one made him snicker slightly, and he didn’t even know what radon was. But he did know that he kind of wanted to steal that one and read it to Rachel, if only to piss her off. Apparently pointing out to a ghost all the other ways she could have died was a really shitty thing to do. Who knew?
He didn’t get to read the title of the next one, because suddenly, the counselor was looking right at him, and it completely claimed his attention. Immediately he didn’t like the way she was looking at him. There was something wrong about it, and he knew all about wrong. He was currently having an affair with three different cougars, if only to embarrass Rachel. She was also the reason why he’d shaved his hair into a Mohawk. Everything in his life revolved around the best way to annoy the reason he was sitting in this office. Freaking Rachel Berry.
“Noah,” Miss Pillsbury began, still looking at him with that strange look on her face. “Do you know why I called you in here today?
“Puck.” He instantly corrected the counselor. As long as he was in here, she might as well get his name right at least.
She blinked at him for a moment, looking rather confused with his sudden interjection. “I’m sorry?” She asked, the strange look immediately gone.
“The only people who call me Noah are my mom and Ber-” He caught himself just in time from admitting to a counselor that a dead girl named Rachel talked to him. Yeah, the last thing he needed was to be carted off to the hospital and shot up with clozapine or thorazine. Been there, done that, and it wasn’t as fun as it looked in the movies. “Barbara, my sister.”
Miss Pillsbury looked confused again and glanced down at his file. “It says here that your sister’s name is Sarah…” She said slowly, looking as though she were wondering if she misread the file.
“It is.” Puck told her casually. “But she’s going through a Barbara Streisand phase and makes us all call her Barbara.” Since Finn screwed him over all those years ago, he’d since learned how to lie, and how to lie well. Lying and crime were his two best skills now because of that.
She looked appeased with his answer. “Alright, Puck.” She made a slight face as she said his name, but continued on with her line of questioning nonetheless. “Do you know why I called you in here today?”
He looked thoughtful for a moment as he pretended to think about it. Oh, he had a very good idea why she’d called him in here today, and he would bet money that it had something to do with a ghost named Rachel Berry. But he wasn’t going to admit to talking to a ghost to the deer-eyed woman with the weird pamphlets. “For trying to have sex with Santana Lopez under the bleachers?” He asked in his best, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about’ voice. It was something he’d perfected over the years.
“No.” Miss Pillsbury said seriously, and it looked as though she had more to say, but Puck really didn’t give her that chance.
“For skipping math class again?” He tried, honestly hoping that if he pissed her off enough, she would forget the real reason why she’d called him in here and kick him out of her office.
“No.” And once again she tried to say more, but he didn’t let her.
“For throwing that gay kid in the dumpster?”
Miss Pillsbury took a deep breath, looking flustered by all the things he’d admitted to. “Please stop guessing.” She begged him before glancing down at his file and then back up at him. “Noah. I mean, Puck, I know you know why I called you in here. Mr. Schuester knows you saw him yesterday.”
Puck sighed and slouched down into his chair. How the hell was he going to get himself out of this one? There were only so many times he could get out of talking to himself in public before he got himself institutionalized again. He didn’t need this. Not now. He could already hear the conversation with the doctors.
Now, Noah, why aren’t you getting better?
Because he’s not ill. And this societal need to impose rules and regulations upon speech and beliefs is completely ridiculous. I could report you. My dads are gay. I know some lawyers who would be appalled at Noah’s treatment here.
He can’t hear you, Berry!
What was that Noah?
He pushed the hallucination to the back of his mind and instead forced himself to focus on how to get Miss Pillsbury to drop this. His first thought was to try to seduce her, but she didn’t look like the type, which left him trying to figure out something that wasn’t as easy. Shit.
“Mr. Schuester said he heard you talking to yourself in his classroom. He said you’ve been doing that a lot lately. Actually… A lot of teachers have mentioned that they’ve seen you talking to yourself. And I took a look at your file, and-”
“You can’t do that!” He tried to interject, slightly pissed at himself for letting it slip how much this bothered him. God, if it got out that he spent time in the nuthouse, simple high school hazing would be the least of his concerns.
“Noah,” She began in a lecture sounding voice, completely ignoring the fact that he’d specifically asked her not to call him Noah. It reminded him of the doctors he’d been forced to visit as a kid. “You’ve been hospitalized six times for hallucinations.” Her lips pressed into a line, and she looked distressed for a moment. “And I don’t think I have a pamphlet for you if you’re suffering from hallucinations again…”
He sighed in frustration at the counselor who wasn’t guiding him as well as the name suggested. What was with that anyway? “My best friend was a ghost.” He deadpanned to her. “I had a complicated childhood. It’s no big whoop or anything, Miss P. I’m cured. It’s a miracle. Hallelujah.”
Blinking in complete confusion, Miss Pillsbury looked like she didn’t quite know how to respond to him. Her mouth opened, and then closed. It opened, and then closed again. She honestly didn’t know what to say to him, and he could tell. This was his perfect opportunity to get the hell out of here. He just had to figure out how. Puck glanced helplessly around the fishbowl room as he tried to think.
What would Berry do?
Then it hit him. What would Berry do! God, he’d only spent his entire childhood with the crazy bitch. He knew all the fucking words to Rent before he knew his ABCs for Christ’s sake. Why hadn’t he thought of thinking like her before?
“I was running lines for a play.” He announced, shooting the counselor his best ‘are you really that much of an idiot? Thinking I was talking to myself? Please’ look that Rachel had coached him on after Finn had gotten him into all that trouble.
She blinked for a moment, and stared thoughtfully at him. “What?” She asked sounding very confused about the whole situation.
Quickly Puck racked his mind for what play he could have been possibly running lines for. What had Mr. Schue walked in on yesterday? He couldn’t exactly remember. All he knew was that he’d been in an empty classroom and Rachel had been bitching at him because he wouldn’t sign up for choir. Why the fuck would he want to be in a choir class for anyway? He was a stud, and a football player. Not a choir fairy. Just because she missed singing in an ensemble didn’t mean he was going to join a group of gay boys and ugly, fat chicks just so she could feel better about her life. And maybe, just maybe, he’d started singing Rent at her just because he knew how much it pissed her off…
“I’m planning on auditioning for Rent up in Columbus.” He lied, feeling proud with himself for coming up with somewhat of a plausible lie. Shit. He didn’t even care right now how believable the lie was. He just needed to get as far as possible away from the freaky counselor as possible.
Thankfully the bell rang then, and Puck jumped to his feet immediately. “Gotta go. Bye.” And with that he literally bolted from the office. He couldn’t do this anymore. He swore that covering up for the fact that he had an annoying ghost for a freaky pet was going to actually drive him crazy one of these days. This meant one thing and one thing only: he really needed to get rid of Rachel Berry before she made his life more of a living hell than it already was.
Instead of going to class, he went to the boys’ bathroom, desperate to do anything to avoid class. Even though he didn’t want to think about it that counselor had really freaked him out. He couldn’t go through his whole life trying to hide the existence of Rachel from everyone he met. Maybe if he ignored her for awhile, she’d get the hint and stop haunting him. She couldn’t literally recite every musical from memory like she’d threatened the last time he tried it, could she?
The thoughts were pushed from his mind, and he busied himself at the urinal. He’d take a leak and then he’d spend the rest of the afternoon sleeping off his conversation with Miss Pillsbury in the nurse’s office. It sounded like a reasonable plan. Or at least that’s what he was thinking as he stared blankly at the wall in front of him.
“So? What did she want?”
Puck jumped nearly a foot in the air at the voice. “Holy shit, Berry!” He complained, his distraction causing him to accidentally spray the wall instead of the urinal for a moment. “Don’t do that!” And he quickly finished peeing, and zipped his pants back up. “Haven’t we had the ‘boys bathrooms are off limits’ talk already this week?” He checked the stalls to make sure they were alone in the bathroom. An audience was the last thing he needed at the moment. “And dude, you can’t keep talking to me at school.”
Rachel gave him a slight shrug, idly picking at the light pink sweater she’d died in seventeen years prior. Everything he just said, she’d heard before and she had a peculiar way of just ignoring the things she didn’t really want to hear. “Is that why you were called in during your history class?” She suddenly looked proud about something. “Which I stayed and listened to the rest of. Nixon was a very intriguing man. I paid close attention to the lecture, and I’ll dictate the notes to you later this evening.”
Of course. He stops doing homework because of her, and she comes up with new ways to force him into doing his homework.
She stared pointedly at him for a moment. “Aren’t you going to wash your hands?” She waited until he started grumbling at her, and washed his hands before asking again, “What did she want?”
“To know if I was going to go psycho and start killing people.”
The ghost’s gaze narrowed as she stared at him. “Noah Puckerman!” She scolded. “What did she really want?”
“To know if I was crazy again because no one else can hear you!” He yelled at her, feeling the frustration that accompanied spending time with her, washing over him. “You can’t keep popping up at school all the time. Go to the place where all the fucking ghosts go to pass their time and leave me alone!”
Rachel’s face fell as she stared at him. “But I thought you like having me around. I give you the answers to your exams since you insist on not studying.” Her lip trembled for a moment. “I thought I was helping you.”
Puck took a deep breath, and reminded himself that he could not strangle Rachel because she wasn’t real. Well… She was real. At least she was real in theory… “Talking to me, and causing scenes when I’m hanging with my friends is not helping, Berry.”
Her eyes flashed dangerously for a moment. “Hanging?” She asked him incredulously. “You were nailing someone’s lawn furniture to their roof! Excuse me for not wanting you to engage in such a juvenile, not to mention completely rude, activity.”
“You’re making my life impossible!” He snapped, scrubbing his hands over his face.
She threw her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t see how…” She cocked her head to the side, as though she were thinking about the ways she made Puck’s life worse. Frankly, she thought he was blessed to have her in his life. Otherwise he’d be failing school. Who else would sing at him nonstop until he got out of bed, and who would help him cheat through his classes even though it was completely immoral? He needed her to survive; he just didn’t see things the same way that she did.
Noah groaned in frustration before shooting her a look. “Alright. Let me spell it out for you.” He said slowly. “You are dead. No one else can see you. And no one else can hear you. When you pull stunts like this at school, people think I’m talking to myself, and they want to take me away in a straight jacket.” He glared at her. “Again.”
“Once.” Rachel said dismissively. “That happened once.”
“And I had to switch schools six times because of you.”
“And what does that have to do with me, Noah?” Rachel asked him innocently. “You asked to switch schools all those times because you thought your peers were talking badly about you behind your back, and you aren’t as secure in your manliness as you were trying to prove to that horrible girl you’ve been trying to court for the past couple of weeks.” She shot him a defiant look. “I’m only helping you.”
“Well, don’t.” He snapped, completely frustrated with his resident ghost before storming out of the bathroom, and knocking over an incoming freshman in the process.
Rachel sighed as she watched him leave “But it’s my job!” She screamed out after him, knowing very well he could still hear her. “I don’t have a choice. We’re stuck with each other!”
Puck froze in the middle of the mostly empty hallway before responding lowly, “Yeah, we’ll see about that.”