Half of my Heart
Title: Half of My Heart
Author: burntotears
Pairing: Rachel/Puck
Rating: R
Word Count: 4472
Disclaimer: © Fox
A/N: Story starts right after “Sectionals.”
Lyrics from John Mayer’s All We Ever Do is Say Goodbye and Half of My Heart.
I love you more than songs can say
but I can't keep running after yesterday
Puck stared at the name flashing on his phone once again. He was not going to answer it. Not only had Rachel called him like a million times, she also started texting him yesterday. (As it turns out, she’s awful at it. She uses complete sentences and it takes three texts just for her to say “Will you answer your phone when I call?” because she’s so busy talking about how he could be missing some huge emergency with his childlike behavior and where does she get off telling him these things anyway? She’s not even his friend.) Generally he wouldn’t mind getting the calls and the texts, but things weren’t exactly in his favor right now and he could do without her shrill voice and uncanny ability to never shut the fuck up.
He stared at that awful picture he took of her right after a Glee practice with some difficult choreography which left them all a bit sweaty-Rachel’s hair clung to her face like someone had slapped glue on her forehead. She offered him 10 dollars to erase it and never speak of it again and he laughed in her face and sent it to the rest of the club. It was now the picture everyone in Glee had for Rachel’s contact information on their cell phones.
And then Quinn and Finn fluttered into his brain with a disgusting ability to always make him feel like utter shit so before the last ring, he answered it. “What do you want, Berry?” At least he could be an ass to her, even though he really did want someone to talk to him.
Rachel seemed to hesitate, either from shock that he’d actually answered or because he’d called her ‘Berry,’ he wasn’t sure but did not particularly care. “I…” She began to say and then fell silent again.
“I’m not going to waste my daytime minutes with us listening to each other breathe, so say something or I’m hanging up.”
“I’msorryItoldFinn,” She blurted out quickly as she could, afraid she would never have another chance to tell him this. “I didn’t mean to hurt you or Quinn-well I did want her and Finn to break up but I wasn’t trying to give her or you any trouble. So I’m sorry.”
Puck heard himself snort and was annoyed that he reacted at all. What did he give a shit about what Rachel Berry did or didn’t do? “I’m not worried about your apologies, Berry. It’s done.”
“Noah I- ”
“My name is Puck, Berry. Stop calling me that and stop calling me.” He hung up on her knowing fully well that this would only make her contact him more and being particularly smug about the fact. When your best friend hates you and the girl you knocked up doesn’t want anything to do with you, your contact list tends to get pretty small. He couldn’t rule out the other Glee members only because they were the only people who would even acknowledge his existence at the moment.
When did he become such a fucking loser?
------
Winning sectionals had, for a moment, brought them all back together as a happy, smiling, content group, but the high died out quickly. They were all civil and interactive with each other when they were practicing, but that feeling of camaraderie always fizzled when practice was over. Finn left the practice room so quickly now that Puck wondered if he was going to join the track team. Quinn, though not as peeved as Finn was, still looked at him like he was a spider she could not get to die no matter how many times she stepped on his face. Santana, regardless of how she enjoyed taking Quinn down a peg, didn’t really even talk to him unless she wanted to have sex. Rachel was… Rachel.
And Puck was left meandering in the practice room hoping that someone would talk to him only to see that the original members of the club stuck together like a pack of really gay wolves; even Artie had better things to do than talk to Puck.
Had the world gone fucking mad?
Puck could bang any mom on his block and he could get them to cry his name as though he were a god, but then he left and they were completely devoted to loving their nine to five husbands again. And he was alone again. He was alone all the time now.
Rachel was still bugging the shit out of him, when he was at school and when he wasn’t. He would comply only in short bursts to insure she would keep coming back. He wanted to commit suicide for clinging to the hope that Rachel-fucking-Berry was going to talk to him again, but he didn’t have anything else to look forward to.
------
why you wanna break my heart again
why am I gonna let you try
It didn’t take long for Quinn to finally call. He had expected it and had secretly hoped for it. She said she wanted to do this on her own but when had she ever been good at that? Her first thought when she got pregnant was to latch onto Finn and attack him constantly about money without even considering the option that she should get a job herself. In fact she had always relied on Finn to help her keep up appearances even before she got pregnant. She didn’t do anything alone and Puck knew this, so he was not at all surprised to hear from her a week and a half after she told him she was going to go it alone.
“I need help,” she whispered into the receiver.
Puck, being who he was, said “I’ll be there in a second,” and didn’t even give her a chance to say why.
She asked him to meet her at some fast food restaurant they would sometimes visit after football games. It was not quite as entertaining when they weren’t surrounded by the rest of the football team and the Cheerios, laughing and carrying on.
She was still living at Finn’s house because she had nowhere else to go and of course Finn wasn’t gong to throw her out on the street nor would his mother have let him. She was still in love with Finn, regardless of the fact that she so easily got drunk with him and so willingly offered up her virginity. She wanted to fix things between the three of them so that Finn would date her again.
He stared at her forehead the whole time, the words cutting through his insides like knives. She was asking him to do her a favor, a solid-to help her win back the man she really wanted, not the one she decided to have sex with. Quinn expected all of this from him because it was his fault and his fault alone that she was pregnant. In her mind it did not take two people to make a baby-just one stupid, pathetic loser to hope upon hope that a beautiful and popular girl would actually want to be with him. Just one idiot to think that this girl had chosen him, not Finn, to be the one she made love with for the very first time. To him, in so many ways, it was not just sex and it was not just alcohol. To her, he was not any different from the homeless man who slept in front of the library. She considered him trash and he considered himself lucky she even spoke to him.
Had Quinn always been such a goddamn bitch?
Puck agreed to try and help her anyway.
If he were anyone else, he would have told himself already that he was being a fucking pussy, letting a girl who didn’t even like him drag him along on a leash like a lapdog. Regardless of all the signs pointing the other way, he still held a glimmer of hope that Quinn would choose him.
He should have known better. Regardless of the fact that it takes two people to have sex together, Finn was cracking like an egg to Quinn’s advances. Puck knew that it would go this way-Finn would be more mad at Puck because they were close, had been for ages, and he felt betrayed by someone who he supposedly could trust. Puck felt bad about it but he didn’t sometimes too. If Finn wasn’t so damn clueless, he would know that a girl can’t get pregnant because semen is floating around in the water she’s sitting in. Puck wasn’t a genius, but he could at least attest to the fact that he would have laughed at the girl who tried to pull this over on him.
Finn didn’t forgive Quinn, but he did agree to keep helping her. Basically he agreed to keep dating her without the touchy feely parts, which they never really had anyway. So even though he ‘didn’t forgive Quinn,’ he forgave her. He didn’t forgive Puck. He wouldn’t even talk to Puck. Quinn had the intentions of making everything okay between the three of them, but when things were going the way she wanted, she forgot all about Puck’s part of the triangle. He was the obtuse angle and he was alone. Again.
------
Rachel did not let up. In the beginning Puck was enjoying the game, but now he was getting sick of her. She had the worst timing of anyone in the history of the world-she would call him when he was masturbating or brooding or watching TV. He actually was unsure which pissed him off more.
Though she was relentless, she did not start stalking him until yesterday, when she showed up at his house as though it was completely normal for two of them to have after school play dates. Puck was unhappy that anyone had interrupted his daily dose of Dragon Ball Z, even more so that it was Rachel who was doing it.
Puck, for all his manly aloofness, looked pretty pathetic lately. The silent treatment from his friends was getting to him, even if he didn’t want to admit it. He wouldn’t admit that even if he were tortured. He was a Puckerman and he would go down fighting, damnit.
“What the-” he started to say but she pushed her way past him into his living room. Believe it or not, her actions stunned him into silence. For a minute anyway.
“Look Noah, I know Finn still isn’t talking to you and Quinn…” She had lost her train of thought, though, or maybe lost the gall she had had before when she practiced this speech for the fifteenth time in her mirror.
It was a good enough opening as any. “Rachel seriously, what are you doing here?” He kicked himself inwardly for forgetting to curse or be overtly rude toward her. He really was out of his element here.
“They got back together, didn’t they?” She asked finally, looking up at him with the questioning face of a two year old when she finds out Santa isn’t real.
“I guess. I don’t care,” he replied, sitting down on his couch and not offering her a seat. Or offering any hospitality whatsoever because he’s just too damn tired to bother with anything anymore.
“You missed practice today,” she added then, sitting down on the other end of the couch. Did he have fucking cooties now? Everyone edged around him as though he was going to turn into the Hulk at any minute. Maybe he was.
He looked up at her then, surprise in his face. He’d forgotten about glee practice. Actually he hadn’t been sure what day it was for the past few weeks. Apparently moping around in his house everyday made time confusing and useless. “Sorry,” he said genuinely, knowing that Rachel would be the one most upset about him not showing up. She wasn’t the teacher but she acted like she was.
“I just wanted to make sure you were alright. Despite his protesting, I got Mr. Schuester to get me your address out of the office. He complained that it could get him fired, but I told him that the Glee club morale rested on the hinges of making sure that you were at least alive, if not still functional.” She stopped talking suddenly as though she realized she was rambling. For the first time he didn’t even bother telling her to shut up.
“I’ll try not to miss again, Berry,” Puck replied, a sudden hardness in his voice. Before he might have been a bit elated to see her at his doorstep, giving two shits about him, but he knew the truth. He was second choice, even for Rachel, and she wouldn’t be here if Finn had called her up and asked her out.
Rachel stood up, hearing the edge in his voice. “Are you?” She asked and he looked up at her face.
“Am I what?”
“Are you okay?” She looked timid again and he felt his insides melt, felt the anger disappear for an instant.
But it came back to him. “No. Can you go now?” Though his voice sounded more tired than angry, she still left without another word. He was glad to be rid of her.
That night he woke up almost five times, each time from a dream about Rachel.
------
just when I had you off my head
your voice comes thrashing wildly through my quiet bed
Regionals were fast approaching and the club was abuzz about Vocal Adrenalin mopping the floor with their faces.
“We’re good, Mr. Schue, but we aren’t miracle workers,” Kurt said, voicing the other members’ opinions aloud. Puck shrugged along with them.
Mr. Schuester broke out another one of his team motivating speeches and Puck leaned back, tuning him out. In his opinion, they actually were pretty damn good and he didn’t see why they couldn’t win at Regionals.
He had been feeling better about Quinn and Finn lately. After so many weeks of not talking with them, he started to numb to their existence entirely. Interacting with them in Glee was just putting on the show and they all stayed professional during their routines. Afterward he didn’t really care that much that the two of them left together and said nothing to the rest of them.
“Noah, you think we have what it takes, don’t you?” His head began to focus when he heard his name. Or maybe it was the voice. Lately he felt himself tuning into Rachel’s words as much as he used to tune them out. He supposed it was kind of like it was with Finn and Quinn; after so long listening to her talk nonstop, he became used to the ranting and no longer cared one way or another that she always spoke more than she needed to.
He refused, of course, to admit that it could be anything else. “Yeah, I think we’ve got a good shot,” he agreed, looking at her then. A grin broke out on her face and he found himself smiling too because regardless of the fact that she could be annoying, she was still hot.
And he also kept dreaming about her all the time.
Puck finally shouldered his backpack and headed out of the practice room, ready to go home. Rachel had followed him. Today she was bouncy, which meant that her voice got really high and she jumped around in a skirt that was a little shorter than he thought was allowed at school.
He would have chastised himself for staring at her legs and her boobs because of who she was, but really he was a guy and he couldn’t feel ashamed for wanting to tap a fine looking lady. Much less a fine Jewish lady. “Thanks for agreeing with me,” he heard her saying.
He started to say he wasn’t doing it for her, but shook his head. “Yeah sure, Rachel,” he said and kept walking, trying to look ahead instead of staring at her chest while she practically skipped along next to him.
“I was wondering,” she started, shifting her backpack from one shoulder to the other. She looked so strained by it that he took the bag from her and threw it over his shoulder along with his own. She beamed like that weird cat from Alice in Wonderland. It was cute…for Rachel. “I was wondering if you wanted to practice with me some after class. For Regionals,” she added as though she had to clarify she wasn’t trying to spend time with him.
He found himself shrugging, which he would later remember was a really stupid fucking idea. He did not need to be spending time alone with her, especially if she was not going to let him touch her boobs. If she would make out with him, she should at least let him touch her boobs. It was completely logical in every way and he didn’t understand why she didn’t get it. Instead of saying yes, he said, “Can I touch your boobs?” Admittedly he hadn’t meant to say anything like that, but staring at her chest seemed to bring it out of him.
“No!” She replied indignantly and he just said ‘okay’ and carried her bag for her to her car.
------
Spending time alone with Rachel was like rubbing a cheese grater all over your face for about three hours, then afterward swimming in a pool of pussy. Which sadly enough he wasn’t doing, but Rachel had a hot and cold affect on him he had never noticed with any other girl. One minute she made him want to pull a shotgun on her to end his misery and the next he wanted to throw her against her vanity table and fuck her senseless.
Sadly his fantasies weren’t coming true. In fact she hadn’t even made out with him again and he’d been ‘practicing’ with her for at least a week. How long did she expect him to wait? Forever, he reminded himself, because she hadn’t asked him over to dry hump, but to sing songs at each other like birds or some shit.
“I’m not a bird,” he blurted out and Rachel turned to look at him, confusion on her face.
“What?” She replied.
“I said I’m not a bird. I can’t sit around and let songs say what I feel.” He stood up suddenly. He had to get somewhere else and fast or this all was going to be royally fucked up and this time it would be his own fault.
Rachel’s features darkened before him. She scrunched her face, her eyebrows coming together and her nostrils flaring out like they wanted to escape from her nose. It was adorable and it made Puck want to kiss her. “Are you saying that-”
He didn’t let her finish though. He grabbed her by her upper arms and bodily pulled her to him, pressing his lips against hers as if he were starving for it. Her frustration melted in front of him and turned into confusion. But she kissed him back, eventually, and when the kiss deepened and turned tender, he bailed. He thrust her away from himself with a huff. His head and his heart and his dick were all arguing with each other, each wanting his own way. Usually he sided with his smaller head but today his actual brain was winning, something he didn’t even try to understand.
Puck picked up his guitar case and left her room, left her house and didn’t look back. Rachel was already calling his phone before he’d even gotten home. He turned it off and let out a scream that was synonymous with the roar of an extremely frustrated lion.
------
Puck was only slightly surprised when Rachel found him. Puck did not have very many places he could go when he wanted to just get out and apparently Rachel had stumbled upon that fact easily enough.
He sat cross-legged in the middle of the 50 yard line, strumming at his guitar and singing softly to himself. When he heard her approaching, he didn’t stop and he didn’t say anything when she sat down across from him.
“I was made to believe I'd never love somebody else,
I made a plan, stay the man who can only love himself,
lonely was the song I sang, 'til the day you came,
showing me another way and all that my love can bring.”
Eventually he stopped singing, strumming quietly on his guitar with Rachel sitting quietly in front of him. If he were not lost in his own thoughts he would have marveled at her.
She leaned forward and kissed him. He did not pull away from her, even though his chest was pressing awkwardly on the side of his guitar. It was a long kiss, not at all pressing or urgent, as if they had done it many times and planned to do so many more.
“Its not so bad, y’know,” Rachel said quietly a few minutes later, back in her own space.
He plucked a few strings. “What isn’t?”
“Singing your feelings. Sometimes other people put our feelings into words we couldn’t ourselves. In fact there are hundreds of romance stories in which someone sang a song to the other to explain how he-”
“Shut up, Rachel,” Puck said quietly, no malice behind the words.
“Don’t tell me to shut up, Noah. I’m trying to-”
“You’re just settling for me,” he spoke in the same quiet tone, trying to mask his words with guitar notes.
Rachel was quiet for some time. He took that as an affirmative answer to a question he hadn’t posed. He was looking down at his guitar when she spoke again.
“So are you.” She said it in such a defiant tone that his head shot up and he glared at her incredulously. “Noah,” she said, more gently this time, “I’m not going to lie to myself or to you. You shouldn’t either.”
His face relaxed and he shrugged off her words. He looked past her toward the bleachers not saying anything to her in return. His eyes met hers when she began singing, however.
“Half of my heart's got a grip on the situation,
half of my heart takes time,
half of my heart's got a right mind to tell you,
that I can't keep loving you,
oh, with half of my heart.”
And then he was singing along with her, his voice melting into hers.
“But I can't stop loving you,
I can't stop loving you,
No, I can't stop loving you with half of my heart.”
When both of their voices faded and his guitar notes did too, he set the instrument aside and looked at her. Rachel stared back at him with the same intensity and there no longer seemed to be anything to talk about. They were on the same page now, same note if you will, and there was nothing left for him to do but kiss her.
He leaned toward her but he did not have to lean very far because she met him halfway. This time they kissed urgently, tugging at each other’s arms and sides to get closer to one another. He pushed her gently on her back in the grass, hovering over her by supporting his weight with his right hand as he tangled his left in her hair. She couldn’t seem to decide where to put her hands. They wandered from his shoulders to his upper back to his upper arms to the back of his neck until finally she either gave up or found a place she wanted to leave them.
His arm started to cramp, so he slowly lowered himself on top of her body, his arm curling around her waist, pulling her up toward him. She didn’t seem to protest against his advances in any way, which was what he took to be a blessing. Was she wearing a skirt again? He couldn’t remember, so he drug his left hand down the side of her body to her hips then down her thigh until he felt the soft skin underneath his fingers and found his answer.
Rachel’s lips parted beneath his and he snaked his tongue along her bottom lip, tasting some sort of flavored chapstick he was too dizzy to identify. He was beginning to wish he wasn’t wearing jeans because they pulled taunt across his lower region now, making him a bit uncomfortable. There were ways he could relieve that though and he hooked his left hand underneath her thigh, tugging her leg away from the other until, “Yes,” he almost hissed into her mouth. His cock fit in between her legs and he could feel wet cotton against his jeans. He smirked into her mouth as he caught her moaning at the contact.
“Noah,” she spoke a little breathlessly, pressing her hips up toward him and letting her head fall back against the dampening grass. He lowered his mouth onto her exposed neck, sucking in the hollow of her throat until he began to moan against her skin at the steady rocking motions they made with their hips. He was still holding onto her thigh and the leverage made the contact more intense and pleasurable.
“Rachel,” he whispered, not able to speak any louder. She looked into his face and he said, “You’re beautiful,” but then his eyes closed as he moaned involuntarily. Her mouth was covering his again and he kissed her fervently, sucking and biting lightly on her lips sloppily as they moved.
Puck came quickly; quicker than he would ever admit to. Rachel didn’t seem to mind, though. As he continued to rock against her, riding through his orgasm, she peaked as well and her thighs tightened against his hips. She tossed her neck back in an arch, breaking from his kiss, so he began sucking on the side of her neck until she finally stopped rocking into him and fell flat against the grass again. He let his body press down warmly atop hers.
He kissed her nose and then her mouth, tenderly, as he regained his breath. He released his hold on her thigh and ran his fingers through her hair, noticing that she was sweating a little. He grinned, thinking of the picture on his cell phone and she looked at him warily.
“What are you grinning about?” She asked, unsure if she wanted the answer.
“I think I got better than boob action,” he laughed and she hit him on the shoulder without any force.
------
down the road, later on
you will hate that I never gave more to you than half of my heart
-fin-
Author: burntotears
Pairing: Rachel/Puck
Rating: R
Word Count: 4472
Disclaimer: © Fox
A/N: Story starts right after “Sectionals.”
Lyrics from John Mayer’s All We Ever Do is Say Goodbye and Half of My Heart.
I love you more than songs can say
but I can't keep running after yesterday
Puck stared at the name flashing on his phone once again. He was not going to answer it. Not only had Rachel called him like a million times, she also started texting him yesterday. (As it turns out, she’s awful at it. She uses complete sentences and it takes three texts just for her to say “Will you answer your phone when I call?” because she’s so busy talking about how he could be missing some huge emergency with his childlike behavior and where does she get off telling him these things anyway? She’s not even his friend.) Generally he wouldn’t mind getting the calls and the texts, but things weren’t exactly in his favor right now and he could do without her shrill voice and uncanny ability to never shut the fuck up.
He stared at that awful picture he took of her right after a Glee practice with some difficult choreography which left them all a bit sweaty-Rachel’s hair clung to her face like someone had slapped glue on her forehead. She offered him 10 dollars to erase it and never speak of it again and he laughed in her face and sent it to the rest of the club. It was now the picture everyone in Glee had for Rachel’s contact information on their cell phones.
And then Quinn and Finn fluttered into his brain with a disgusting ability to always make him feel like utter shit so before the last ring, he answered it. “What do you want, Berry?” At least he could be an ass to her, even though he really did want someone to talk to him.
Rachel seemed to hesitate, either from shock that he’d actually answered or because he’d called her ‘Berry,’ he wasn’t sure but did not particularly care. “I…” She began to say and then fell silent again.
“I’m not going to waste my daytime minutes with us listening to each other breathe, so say something or I’m hanging up.”
“I’msorryItoldFinn,” She blurted out quickly as she could, afraid she would never have another chance to tell him this. “I didn’t mean to hurt you or Quinn-well I did want her and Finn to break up but I wasn’t trying to give her or you any trouble. So I’m sorry.”
Puck heard himself snort and was annoyed that he reacted at all. What did he give a shit about what Rachel Berry did or didn’t do? “I’m not worried about your apologies, Berry. It’s done.”
“Noah I- ”
“My name is Puck, Berry. Stop calling me that and stop calling me.” He hung up on her knowing fully well that this would only make her contact him more and being particularly smug about the fact. When your best friend hates you and the girl you knocked up doesn’t want anything to do with you, your contact list tends to get pretty small. He couldn’t rule out the other Glee members only because they were the only people who would even acknowledge his existence at the moment.
When did he become such a fucking loser?
------
Winning sectionals had, for a moment, brought them all back together as a happy, smiling, content group, but the high died out quickly. They were all civil and interactive with each other when they were practicing, but that feeling of camaraderie always fizzled when practice was over. Finn left the practice room so quickly now that Puck wondered if he was going to join the track team. Quinn, though not as peeved as Finn was, still looked at him like he was a spider she could not get to die no matter how many times she stepped on his face. Santana, regardless of how she enjoyed taking Quinn down a peg, didn’t really even talk to him unless she wanted to have sex. Rachel was… Rachel.
And Puck was left meandering in the practice room hoping that someone would talk to him only to see that the original members of the club stuck together like a pack of really gay wolves; even Artie had better things to do than talk to Puck.
Had the world gone fucking mad?
Puck could bang any mom on his block and he could get them to cry his name as though he were a god, but then he left and they were completely devoted to loving their nine to five husbands again. And he was alone again. He was alone all the time now.
Rachel was still bugging the shit out of him, when he was at school and when he wasn’t. He would comply only in short bursts to insure she would keep coming back. He wanted to commit suicide for clinging to the hope that Rachel-fucking-Berry was going to talk to him again, but he didn’t have anything else to look forward to.
------
why you wanna break my heart again
why am I gonna let you try
It didn’t take long for Quinn to finally call. He had expected it and had secretly hoped for it. She said she wanted to do this on her own but when had she ever been good at that? Her first thought when she got pregnant was to latch onto Finn and attack him constantly about money without even considering the option that she should get a job herself. In fact she had always relied on Finn to help her keep up appearances even before she got pregnant. She didn’t do anything alone and Puck knew this, so he was not at all surprised to hear from her a week and a half after she told him she was going to go it alone.
“I need help,” she whispered into the receiver.
Puck, being who he was, said “I’ll be there in a second,” and didn’t even give her a chance to say why.
She asked him to meet her at some fast food restaurant they would sometimes visit after football games. It was not quite as entertaining when they weren’t surrounded by the rest of the football team and the Cheerios, laughing and carrying on.
She was still living at Finn’s house because she had nowhere else to go and of course Finn wasn’t gong to throw her out on the street nor would his mother have let him. She was still in love with Finn, regardless of the fact that she so easily got drunk with him and so willingly offered up her virginity. She wanted to fix things between the three of them so that Finn would date her again.
He stared at her forehead the whole time, the words cutting through his insides like knives. She was asking him to do her a favor, a solid-to help her win back the man she really wanted, not the one she decided to have sex with. Quinn expected all of this from him because it was his fault and his fault alone that she was pregnant. In her mind it did not take two people to make a baby-just one stupid, pathetic loser to hope upon hope that a beautiful and popular girl would actually want to be with him. Just one idiot to think that this girl had chosen him, not Finn, to be the one she made love with for the very first time. To him, in so many ways, it was not just sex and it was not just alcohol. To her, he was not any different from the homeless man who slept in front of the library. She considered him trash and he considered himself lucky she even spoke to him.
Had Quinn always been such a goddamn bitch?
Puck agreed to try and help her anyway.
If he were anyone else, he would have told himself already that he was being a fucking pussy, letting a girl who didn’t even like him drag him along on a leash like a lapdog. Regardless of all the signs pointing the other way, he still held a glimmer of hope that Quinn would choose him.
He should have known better. Regardless of the fact that it takes two people to have sex together, Finn was cracking like an egg to Quinn’s advances. Puck knew that it would go this way-Finn would be more mad at Puck because they were close, had been for ages, and he felt betrayed by someone who he supposedly could trust. Puck felt bad about it but he didn’t sometimes too. If Finn wasn’t so damn clueless, he would know that a girl can’t get pregnant because semen is floating around in the water she’s sitting in. Puck wasn’t a genius, but he could at least attest to the fact that he would have laughed at the girl who tried to pull this over on him.
Finn didn’t forgive Quinn, but he did agree to keep helping her. Basically he agreed to keep dating her without the touchy feely parts, which they never really had anyway. So even though he ‘didn’t forgive Quinn,’ he forgave her. He didn’t forgive Puck. He wouldn’t even talk to Puck. Quinn had the intentions of making everything okay between the three of them, but when things were going the way she wanted, she forgot all about Puck’s part of the triangle. He was the obtuse angle and he was alone. Again.
------
Rachel did not let up. In the beginning Puck was enjoying the game, but now he was getting sick of her. She had the worst timing of anyone in the history of the world-she would call him when he was masturbating or brooding or watching TV. He actually was unsure which pissed him off more.
Though she was relentless, she did not start stalking him until yesterday, when she showed up at his house as though it was completely normal for two of them to have after school play dates. Puck was unhappy that anyone had interrupted his daily dose of Dragon Ball Z, even more so that it was Rachel who was doing it.
Puck, for all his manly aloofness, looked pretty pathetic lately. The silent treatment from his friends was getting to him, even if he didn’t want to admit it. He wouldn’t admit that even if he were tortured. He was a Puckerman and he would go down fighting, damnit.
“What the-” he started to say but she pushed her way past him into his living room. Believe it or not, her actions stunned him into silence. For a minute anyway.
“Look Noah, I know Finn still isn’t talking to you and Quinn…” She had lost her train of thought, though, or maybe lost the gall she had had before when she practiced this speech for the fifteenth time in her mirror.
It was a good enough opening as any. “Rachel seriously, what are you doing here?” He kicked himself inwardly for forgetting to curse or be overtly rude toward her. He really was out of his element here.
“They got back together, didn’t they?” She asked finally, looking up at him with the questioning face of a two year old when she finds out Santa isn’t real.
“I guess. I don’t care,” he replied, sitting down on his couch and not offering her a seat. Or offering any hospitality whatsoever because he’s just too damn tired to bother with anything anymore.
“You missed practice today,” she added then, sitting down on the other end of the couch. Did he have fucking cooties now? Everyone edged around him as though he was going to turn into the Hulk at any minute. Maybe he was.
He looked up at her then, surprise in his face. He’d forgotten about glee practice. Actually he hadn’t been sure what day it was for the past few weeks. Apparently moping around in his house everyday made time confusing and useless. “Sorry,” he said genuinely, knowing that Rachel would be the one most upset about him not showing up. She wasn’t the teacher but she acted like she was.
“I just wanted to make sure you were alright. Despite his protesting, I got Mr. Schuester to get me your address out of the office. He complained that it could get him fired, but I told him that the Glee club morale rested on the hinges of making sure that you were at least alive, if not still functional.” She stopped talking suddenly as though she realized she was rambling. For the first time he didn’t even bother telling her to shut up.
“I’ll try not to miss again, Berry,” Puck replied, a sudden hardness in his voice. Before he might have been a bit elated to see her at his doorstep, giving two shits about him, but he knew the truth. He was second choice, even for Rachel, and she wouldn’t be here if Finn had called her up and asked her out.
Rachel stood up, hearing the edge in his voice. “Are you?” She asked and he looked up at her face.
“Am I what?”
“Are you okay?” She looked timid again and he felt his insides melt, felt the anger disappear for an instant.
But it came back to him. “No. Can you go now?” Though his voice sounded more tired than angry, she still left without another word. He was glad to be rid of her.
That night he woke up almost five times, each time from a dream about Rachel.
------
just when I had you off my head
your voice comes thrashing wildly through my quiet bed
Regionals were fast approaching and the club was abuzz about Vocal Adrenalin mopping the floor with their faces.
“We’re good, Mr. Schue, but we aren’t miracle workers,” Kurt said, voicing the other members’ opinions aloud. Puck shrugged along with them.
Mr. Schuester broke out another one of his team motivating speeches and Puck leaned back, tuning him out. In his opinion, they actually were pretty damn good and he didn’t see why they couldn’t win at Regionals.
He had been feeling better about Quinn and Finn lately. After so many weeks of not talking with them, he started to numb to their existence entirely. Interacting with them in Glee was just putting on the show and they all stayed professional during their routines. Afterward he didn’t really care that much that the two of them left together and said nothing to the rest of them.
“Noah, you think we have what it takes, don’t you?” His head began to focus when he heard his name. Or maybe it was the voice. Lately he felt himself tuning into Rachel’s words as much as he used to tune them out. He supposed it was kind of like it was with Finn and Quinn; after so long listening to her talk nonstop, he became used to the ranting and no longer cared one way or another that she always spoke more than she needed to.
He refused, of course, to admit that it could be anything else. “Yeah, I think we’ve got a good shot,” he agreed, looking at her then. A grin broke out on her face and he found himself smiling too because regardless of the fact that she could be annoying, she was still hot.
And he also kept dreaming about her all the time.
Puck finally shouldered his backpack and headed out of the practice room, ready to go home. Rachel had followed him. Today she was bouncy, which meant that her voice got really high and she jumped around in a skirt that was a little shorter than he thought was allowed at school.
He would have chastised himself for staring at her legs and her boobs because of who she was, but really he was a guy and he couldn’t feel ashamed for wanting to tap a fine looking lady. Much less a fine Jewish lady. “Thanks for agreeing with me,” he heard her saying.
He started to say he wasn’t doing it for her, but shook his head. “Yeah sure, Rachel,” he said and kept walking, trying to look ahead instead of staring at her chest while she practically skipped along next to him.
“I was wondering,” she started, shifting her backpack from one shoulder to the other. She looked so strained by it that he took the bag from her and threw it over his shoulder along with his own. She beamed like that weird cat from Alice in Wonderland. It was cute…for Rachel. “I was wondering if you wanted to practice with me some after class. For Regionals,” she added as though she had to clarify she wasn’t trying to spend time with him.
He found himself shrugging, which he would later remember was a really stupid fucking idea. He did not need to be spending time alone with her, especially if she was not going to let him touch her boobs. If she would make out with him, she should at least let him touch her boobs. It was completely logical in every way and he didn’t understand why she didn’t get it. Instead of saying yes, he said, “Can I touch your boobs?” Admittedly he hadn’t meant to say anything like that, but staring at her chest seemed to bring it out of him.
“No!” She replied indignantly and he just said ‘okay’ and carried her bag for her to her car.
------
Spending time alone with Rachel was like rubbing a cheese grater all over your face for about three hours, then afterward swimming in a pool of pussy. Which sadly enough he wasn’t doing, but Rachel had a hot and cold affect on him he had never noticed with any other girl. One minute she made him want to pull a shotgun on her to end his misery and the next he wanted to throw her against her vanity table and fuck her senseless.
Sadly his fantasies weren’t coming true. In fact she hadn’t even made out with him again and he’d been ‘practicing’ with her for at least a week. How long did she expect him to wait? Forever, he reminded himself, because she hadn’t asked him over to dry hump, but to sing songs at each other like birds or some shit.
“I’m not a bird,” he blurted out and Rachel turned to look at him, confusion on her face.
“What?” She replied.
“I said I’m not a bird. I can’t sit around and let songs say what I feel.” He stood up suddenly. He had to get somewhere else and fast or this all was going to be royally fucked up and this time it would be his own fault.
Rachel’s features darkened before him. She scrunched her face, her eyebrows coming together and her nostrils flaring out like they wanted to escape from her nose. It was adorable and it made Puck want to kiss her. “Are you saying that-”
He didn’t let her finish though. He grabbed her by her upper arms and bodily pulled her to him, pressing his lips against hers as if he were starving for it. Her frustration melted in front of him and turned into confusion. But she kissed him back, eventually, and when the kiss deepened and turned tender, he bailed. He thrust her away from himself with a huff. His head and his heart and his dick were all arguing with each other, each wanting his own way. Usually he sided with his smaller head but today his actual brain was winning, something he didn’t even try to understand.
Puck picked up his guitar case and left her room, left her house and didn’t look back. Rachel was already calling his phone before he’d even gotten home. He turned it off and let out a scream that was synonymous with the roar of an extremely frustrated lion.
------
Puck was only slightly surprised when Rachel found him. Puck did not have very many places he could go when he wanted to just get out and apparently Rachel had stumbled upon that fact easily enough.
He sat cross-legged in the middle of the 50 yard line, strumming at his guitar and singing softly to himself. When he heard her approaching, he didn’t stop and he didn’t say anything when she sat down across from him.
“I was made to believe I'd never love somebody else,
I made a plan, stay the man who can only love himself,
lonely was the song I sang, 'til the day you came,
showing me another way and all that my love can bring.”
Eventually he stopped singing, strumming quietly on his guitar with Rachel sitting quietly in front of him. If he were not lost in his own thoughts he would have marveled at her.
She leaned forward and kissed him. He did not pull away from her, even though his chest was pressing awkwardly on the side of his guitar. It was a long kiss, not at all pressing or urgent, as if they had done it many times and planned to do so many more.
“Its not so bad, y’know,” Rachel said quietly a few minutes later, back in her own space.
He plucked a few strings. “What isn’t?”
“Singing your feelings. Sometimes other people put our feelings into words we couldn’t ourselves. In fact there are hundreds of romance stories in which someone sang a song to the other to explain how he-”
“Shut up, Rachel,” Puck said quietly, no malice behind the words.
“Don’t tell me to shut up, Noah. I’m trying to-”
“You’re just settling for me,” he spoke in the same quiet tone, trying to mask his words with guitar notes.
Rachel was quiet for some time. He took that as an affirmative answer to a question he hadn’t posed. He was looking down at his guitar when she spoke again.
“So are you.” She said it in such a defiant tone that his head shot up and he glared at her incredulously. “Noah,” she said, more gently this time, “I’m not going to lie to myself or to you. You shouldn’t either.”
His face relaxed and he shrugged off her words. He looked past her toward the bleachers not saying anything to her in return. His eyes met hers when she began singing, however.
“Half of my heart's got a grip on the situation,
half of my heart takes time,
half of my heart's got a right mind to tell you,
that I can't keep loving you,
oh, with half of my heart.”
And then he was singing along with her, his voice melting into hers.
“But I can't stop loving you,
I can't stop loving you,
No, I can't stop loving you with half of my heart.”
When both of their voices faded and his guitar notes did too, he set the instrument aside and looked at her. Rachel stared back at him with the same intensity and there no longer seemed to be anything to talk about. They were on the same page now, same note if you will, and there was nothing left for him to do but kiss her.
He leaned toward her but he did not have to lean very far because she met him halfway. This time they kissed urgently, tugging at each other’s arms and sides to get closer to one another. He pushed her gently on her back in the grass, hovering over her by supporting his weight with his right hand as he tangled his left in her hair. She couldn’t seem to decide where to put her hands. They wandered from his shoulders to his upper back to his upper arms to the back of his neck until finally she either gave up or found a place she wanted to leave them.
His arm started to cramp, so he slowly lowered himself on top of her body, his arm curling around her waist, pulling her up toward him. She didn’t seem to protest against his advances in any way, which was what he took to be a blessing. Was she wearing a skirt again? He couldn’t remember, so he drug his left hand down the side of her body to her hips then down her thigh until he felt the soft skin underneath his fingers and found his answer.
Rachel’s lips parted beneath his and he snaked his tongue along her bottom lip, tasting some sort of flavored chapstick he was too dizzy to identify. He was beginning to wish he wasn’t wearing jeans because they pulled taunt across his lower region now, making him a bit uncomfortable. There were ways he could relieve that though and he hooked his left hand underneath her thigh, tugging her leg away from the other until, “Yes,” he almost hissed into her mouth. His cock fit in between her legs and he could feel wet cotton against his jeans. He smirked into her mouth as he caught her moaning at the contact.
“Noah,” she spoke a little breathlessly, pressing her hips up toward him and letting her head fall back against the dampening grass. He lowered his mouth onto her exposed neck, sucking in the hollow of her throat until he began to moan against her skin at the steady rocking motions they made with their hips. He was still holding onto her thigh and the leverage made the contact more intense and pleasurable.
“Rachel,” he whispered, not able to speak any louder. She looked into his face and he said, “You’re beautiful,” but then his eyes closed as he moaned involuntarily. Her mouth was covering his again and he kissed her fervently, sucking and biting lightly on her lips sloppily as they moved.
Puck came quickly; quicker than he would ever admit to. Rachel didn’t seem to mind, though. As he continued to rock against her, riding through his orgasm, she peaked as well and her thighs tightened against his hips. She tossed her neck back in an arch, breaking from his kiss, so he began sucking on the side of her neck until she finally stopped rocking into him and fell flat against the grass again. He let his body press down warmly atop hers.
He kissed her nose and then her mouth, tenderly, as he regained his breath. He released his hold on her thigh and ran his fingers through her hair, noticing that she was sweating a little. He grinned, thinking of the picture on his cell phone and she looked at him warily.
“What are you grinning about?” She asked, unsure if she wanted the answer.
“I think I got better than boob action,” he laughed and she hit him on the shoulder without any force.
------
down the road, later on
you will hate that I never gave more to you than half of my heart
-fin-