Whistle For The Choir (3/?)
Name: Whistle For The Choir
Author: iamsamflynn
Spoilers: A Very Glee Christmas.
Pairing: Rachel/Quinn.
Length: 4000+
Rating: up to R.
Summary: They meet Hiram Berry for the first time at the hospital, and Puck explains that this all started with a badly scheduled date.
A/N: Meet Rachel's super seduction skills.
Finn whines like a little bitch for three days before Santana finally snaps and breaks his nose.
It's not shocking, and no one protests, and Mister Schuester doesn't even yell at her, let alone send her to the principal's office. Evidently enough, even he is sick of Finn's constant barrage of 'woe is me' - which, really, is the surprising part, because Finn is practically Schuester's adopted son, courtesy of that "you remind me of myself" syndrome that a lot of the teachers have. And really, bets were on since Monday afternoon about who from the club would hit him first, so when Santana finally flings a well-aimed fist in the boy's face the worst thought in the room is "damn, there goes my twenty," not "well, shit, that must have hurt."
Really, he's been going on about how Rachel won't talk to him, and how Karofsky kicked him in the shin this morning, and how he's not allowed to go to the next party because he's been grounded until he's thirty, and he hasn't gotten to watch the latest episode of Chuck because he's not allowed to watch the television ever again, and on and on and on and on... Santana is visibly restraining herself for fifteen minutes before she leaps from her chair and smashes his nose in, and everyone is actually kind of relieved at the sound of the boy moaning and swearing on the ground, because he's not whinging out loud to himself (no one else really cares) about his punishments anymore.
"Really, Finnocence, just shut the fuck up!" the Latina growls, standing over him while he rolls around on the floor. "She doesn't want you, because you're gay and you cheated on her! And stop fucking complaining, because you're just lucky you didn't get arrested for pushing her around like that!"
No one mentions that any such event would probably lead to Puck getting arrested too - assault and battery was an interesting thing - but Finn looks cowed by it and he slinks out of the room with a bloody nose and tears in his eyes. Mister Schuester just points Santana back to her seat and crosses his arms.
"God, I am so glad his mum pulled him off the football team," Puck mutters dryly. There are a dozen separate parts to Finn's punishment - no more football being one of them, with glee probably about to follow up on that list - and Puck has come to understand that Burt and Carol still don't think there's enough. He really agrees with that.
"This week, I want you to express yourself."
There's a collective pause at Mister Schuester's ridiculously brief lesson outline before Rachel puts her hand up, and everyone's kind of relieved because she hasn't sung for them since her terrible Bon Jovi impression with Blaine on Saturday (it's Thursday now), and maybe today will be another step better than the last few days where she hasn't broken down or anything, but she's been kind of catatonic. Except she doesn't volunteer a song at all so everyone's a little on the fence about the 'progress' portion of the idea. Speaking is a benchmark though, isn't it?
"That's it? Express yourself? No specific genre?"
"No."
"Not a central artist? A decade?"
"Not at all. Individual expression."
"...Well that's just annoying," Rachel mutters dryly, closing her eyes and sinking back into Puck's arm, slung warmly around her, over the back of her chair in the risers. "But okay."
"Nothing else you want to add, Rachel?"
"Not particularly," she replies offhandedly, and the rest of the club exchanges curious looks. She sits forward rather suddenly. "Unless," she draws out, dragging all the attention back to her. Drama. Curiosity. Finn has left the room, and this is Rachel Berry, this is normal, this is relief. "You wouldn't happen to know a song that properly conveys the message 'my boyfriend cheated on me with another boy and wants me back as a gay beard, but hit me when I said no so I cracked my head open and almost drowned', would you Mister Schue?"
"...Uh... no," the teacher replies slowly, awkwardly. Rachel huffs out a sigh, right as Puck starts to grin to himself. "Sorry...?"
"Darn," she deadpans with a snap of her fingers. "Guess there's no expressing myself then."
Puck just chuckles to himself beside her while she gets this self-satisfied smirk on her face that no one else has seen on her before, and the rest of the club exchanges their discomfort as it turns to amusement. If Rachel's joking, then she's definitely feeling better today. And she's a lot more confident today, looking to her Jewish partner in crime with this look on her face that says she has a plan.
"Can I express Puck instead?"
Puck just laughs louder, snatching his arm back from its spot on the back of her chair to cover his gut through the laughter, because the thought of Rachel Berry expressing her inner Noah Puckerman is just too funny. She smiles wryly while everyone around her starts absolutely cackling at the idea.
"I'm not kidding guys. I totally have a song and everything."
The laughter just gets heavier, because the short sentence doesn't sound like the Rachel they know at all, and the thought of Rachel acting like Puck is just absurd. Puck's leaning too far to the side on his chair through his laughter, and he eventually falls to the ground, slumping on the floor with his thunderous laughter. Even Mister Schue is restraining a smile when he gestures for the girl to take the stage. She shakes her head.
"Oh, no, you're not getting it that easy. Rachzilla needs to go change," she says, and if Puck wasn't already dying then he is now.
Rachel just grabs her bag up from the ground beside him and moves to the door, disappearing into the hall with that same smirk on her face. She strides back into the room five minutes later in cargo pants and a white wife beater - there are bruises still dark on her shoulders from where Finn gripped her five days ago, but everyone tries not to pay attention to those - with her hat from their funk number so very long ago stuck on top of her head. The mirth strikes up again. Rachel just keeps up her smirk, shooting Mike a wink and Santana one of Puck's patented 'hey baby' head nods. Even Mister Schue is joining in with the full-on gut-wrenching laughter now, and Puck is still clutching his stomach on the floor, absolutely howling.
But Mike flushes a dark red and Santana does the same - only worse, because her laughter chokes off at the gesture, too, and Quinn's almost falling out of her chair too because of it.
"Holy shit!" the head cheerio manages, earning a glare from her friend. "San's gone. She's - she's better at this than he is!"
It probably helps that Rachel keeps a straight face the whole time, totally in character and standing in front of the glee club with the same swagger and stage-presence that they normally attribute to Noah Puckerman. In fact, if she were taller and distinctly less feminine, they could definitely be the same person. Feminine aesthetics ruined things. Mister Schuester manages to calm himself down after a few more moments, but he definitely has tears in his eyes, and suddenly everyone is thankful that Mercedes has her phone out to record this because it's brilliance on every other level.
"Come on guys, settle down," he calls out, even if he is wheezing a little throughout the words. "Let the girl perform!"
Still, even he can't not laugh when Rachel stomps up the steps to snatch Puck's Letterman from the back of his chair, muttering out a loud, somewhat irate "on the back of a chair? This jacket should only ever grace the shoulders of a hot Jew!" that has Puck struggling to finally climb back into his seat, body still wracked with unrestrained shakes. She strides back down to stand in front of the group with a decidedly butch swagger, in a Letterman jacket that is far too big for her, but it's still a damned good impression.
She turns back to them and gestures to a still-chuckling Artie, who rolls out to grab an electric guitar to help the rest of the band. When they finally start playing the music Puck's head thunks onto his desk to muffle the laughter because this is just too good.
"I don't want to love you, hold you,
I don't want know what you're about.
I don't need your name or number -
Just want to get in and get out"
When Puck finally collects himself - and it's hard, because his lips are still pulling up in a grin every time he look at her, copying his crude dance moves with her own fluid grace - he glances around at the rest of the group. Truth be told, this is the first time he's ever seen Rachel be so open with anyone else. Having known her since they met at synagogue (they were six, and in Lima, Ohio, there weren't that many synagogues around, so their meeting was practically inevitable), Puck has been privy to Rachel's creepy intensity and her awesome friendliness alternatively. No one else is as intimately acquainted with the girl, and he knows it, and he always has - she's socially deficient and well aware of it. She doesn't trust people, even if she pretends to, and he's glad - always has been - that she trusts him. Because when Quinn got pregnant with his kid and everyone else was running errands for her and golden boy Finn Hudson, Rachel Berry was drinking beer and playing Mario Kart with him in his bedroom, stopping him from breaking down.
And it's great being Rachel's best friend. But sometimes Puck wishes that everyone else could see how awesome his girlbro is too.
They're seeing it today - right now, in this moment - when she mercilessly pulls him apart in a musical act, copying his mannerisms and his dance moves and his expressions. Only, from the flush on Santana's cheeks and Sam's raised eyebrows and Quinn's intense gaze, Puck kind of thinks she's pulling him off better than he does. He's not offended by that in the slightest - more amused, and slightly flattered really. They're cool.
From the looks of it - and Puck's not at all surprised because he's known her for years and he knows what she's capable of - Rachel knows exactly what she's doing and exactly who she's doing it to. And when she copies some of his more suggestive dance moves - twisting them with her own natural grace until they're totally drool-worthy instead of just funny - and turns her attention directly onto Santana, he's almost dropping his jaw. Because Santana's not laughing anymore - she's burning right on up.
"Oh baby, let's not pretend.
It's no accident -
I know you'll get exactly what you need out of me."
Rachel leans in close to the cheerleader, eyes locked when she sings the words, and damn - Santana looks like she's about to leap on the girl. And it might be his girlbro and his ex-whatever, but that's hot.
Except, then Rachel whirls away like a true rocker, moving over to sing with Artie for a little while, leaving Santana with nothing more than a wink that's practically promising and Puck thinks the Latina almost faints. He also kind of thinks Quinn's gaze is a little too heated, but that can't possibly be true, because that girl's straight as an arrow. Santana? She likes hot things, and doesn't really care about the gender. Rachel?
Well, she says the jury's still out on that one, but Puck's always thought she picked personalities, not parts.
The song finishes with applause and a signature smirk - it's not Rachel's but it looks damned good on her. But the performance isn't quite over, because Rachel makes her way back over to Santana, and no one knows whether it's the tone, or the words, or the facial expression, but what follows is just perfect.
"Hey babe, what do you say to just you, me, and the back seat of my pick-up - wanna make out?"
And Puck can't help it - he falls right back off his chair and rolls down the risers in laughter, landing face down at the front of the room. It's made so much funnier by the fact that Santana almost looks like she wants to accept the offer. She doesn't - stays in her chair while Rachel goes back to her own and everyone laughs until the end of the lesson.
But Puck isn't surprised when the Latina ditches the Cheerios table to nab a seat next to Rachel at lunch. He is kind of surprised that Rachel stays in her cargoes and his Letterman, splitting her time between her own comments and the same ones everyone expects from his mouth for the rest of the day. But she's loosening up around them (finally), and it sucks that it took being shoved around and almost drowning for her to do it, but he thinks it's pretty cool that she finally is.
On top of that, lingering concern for her personal health aside, everyone seems to like this Rachel - who does the best imitation of Puck ever and doesn't wear argyle and never speaks in long paragraphs and big words. That's not surprising at all - he's always liked this Rachel. She's just used to pushing people away before they get to see her.
"Rachel's... easier," Tina tells him as soon as Santana's grabbed said diva's arm and dragged her away towards the end of their lunch period - Puck has suspicions about that, but he's not going to fault Santana's choice of new best friend. Whatever. The cheerleader won't hurt her, so he doesn't worry. He just nods at Tina, totally understanding what she means. "Is it - is it because of Saturday? Did she hit her head too hard or something? What changed?"
Puck just laughs, frowning a little.
"Nothing did. She's always been like this, it's just that no one really gets to know her," he says simply, and Tina seems a little put out by it, like she realises it too. Mercedes listens in across the table. It probably doesn't help that much that Noah Puckerman knows Rachel better than the other 'losers' in the school - he's thrown his fair share of slushies at her, and not without regret, but they have arrangements for those things that no one else will ever need to know. Puck and Rachel have been friends for years, and experts at hiding it for almost as long. "When we were little, she got a lot of crap about her dads, right? And I know that didn't change, because she still does, but by the time we got here Rach kind of just figured there wasn't a place for her out there socially, and resigned herself to that. Figured if people weren't willing to try to see past who she is at school then they aren't worth trusting with who she is at all."
"Social anxiety?" Tina asks sadly. Puck just shrugs.
"Something like that," he replies. "People weren't good to her. That's just the way things were."
"We haven't made any more effort getting to know her lately than we have before," Mercedes puts in curiously, but not unkindly. To be honest, after Santana had blabbed about Finn losing his V-card, there had been drama by the boatload until New Years, but then Finn had gotten back with Rachel and everything had settled down, and the Glee club had stopped tearing at each other's throats all the time. They weren't all sunshine and rainbows and buddy-buddy 'let's hang out on weekends' - apart from the occasional party, like their pool party on Saturday - but they weren't having a go at each other all the time, and Rachel wasn't making a big deal over all the solos, and the drama toned down. So everyone from Mercedes to Santana and back had been not friends with Rachel, but friendly on a level. They hadn't gotten to know her, but they'd stopped raging against her - and coming up on late-Spring, that was cool. "So what did change?"
"You've all been looking out for her this week," Puck tells them with a small smile. "Like friends. Or guard dogs, at times, really. But it's different for her - like, you're not doing it because you're team mates or whatever, it's because you're friends? So she's trusting you." He says it lightly, smiling all the while. But then his face clouds over with obvious rage, seriousness, warning. Rachel is his girl - not his lover, because they would wreck that scene - but his best friend and his bro - girlbro - and no one messes with her. Not anymore. This weekend scared him - it was so close, so bad. It wouldn't happen again. "Wreck her and I'll hurt you."
It's only for a moment, but it gets the message across to everyone assembled - Mercedes, Tina, Artie, and Mike. Brittany just sits on Artie's lap, staring blankly into the distance, but Puck doesn't feel the need to warn her off of anything. It's Brittany - she'd never do a thing to Rachel, or to anyone, and if she did it wouldn't be on purpose and he knows it. He yawns when the bell goes for the end of his lunch period, standing up from the table abruptly.
"Spanish time, Britt," he reminds lazily. "Later bitches."
Brittany gets up and follows him out of the cafeteria, skipping along beside him on the way to Spanish. He doesn't really know where Santana stole Rachel off to, but he kind of wants to, because they are undoubtedly hot together - the both of them share his Spanish class, so he guesses that explanation is not too far away.
He doesn't really pay much notice to Quinn when she joins the two of them on Brittany's other side, except to give her a sort of polite 'yeah, hi' nod before they reach the classroom. He's not awkward around her - in fact, with Quinn he's entirely comfortable, because having a baby does that to a person, and he does love her in a strictly non-romantic way that he doesn't really dwell on - but they don't always need to talk about things. They aren't saps. There were a few times they were, but it isn't like glimpsing the girl sent him into a spiraling abyss of doom and gloom and memories of loss and separation every damned time.
Only sometimes. That sentiment is shared.
So he and Quinn have this deep 'you were the mother/father of my baby' connection that ends in little need for continuous verbal communication and the occasional shock drop on one another's doorstep for tears and sobs and alcohol, and if anyone ever hurt the girl he'd personally take a baseball bat to their knees. But they aren't, like, besties or anything.
That is Rachel's job.
Rachel - who, with Santana - is nowhere to be seen in their Spanish classroom, but Mister Schuester is standing at the front of the class and waiting for his students, and since Schue is one of the few teachers at McKinley high that Puck actually respects, even in the slightest, he hastens to take his seat.
Santana and Rachel are not the last two people to enter the classroom - heck, they aren't even late - but they certainly are the most interesting.
Santana might have led Rachel away from the table at lunch, but it's Rachel who's dragging the Cheerio along by the hand now. The Latina looks significantly dazed, and there's the slightest stumble in her step, and he might be imagining the slightly off-centred look of her ponytail or the dishevelled look of her Cheerios jacket, but Puck doesn't think he is. Further than that, her lips seem a little redder, maybe a little plumper than normal - why does he notice these things? - and Rachel's hat is obviously on backwards, her hair a little more ruffled than before. She's definitely not dazed though - just smirking again while she leads Santana all the way to the chair in front of Brittany and takes the one in front of Puck for herself.
"Jew fist bump?" he offers as she sits down, and she grins and complies while Santana sits, blank and voiceless, to her left, staring off into space. He can't help but congratulate his friend, still sporting his Letterman. "Get some, Berry!" He hardly notices Quinn scoffing on his right and directing her gaze pointedly at Mister Schuester at the front of the room.
"San, can you help me with my Spanish after school?" Brittany asks idly, cocking her head to the side when her friend doesn't answer her for a few moments. "San?" When she isn't met with an answer again, she turns to Rachel and giggles like this is some normal occurrence. "I think you broke her, Rach."
Rachel just shrugs.
"Hey, she's the one who jumped me, okay?" is her only defense. "Really, it's not my fault she wasn't prepared for my seriously awesome making out skills."
"You're taking this me thing to heart, aren't you?" Puck asks with a smile, and she shrugs with the same expression. "You are really the best girlbro ever. Also, did I mention how great your song choice was? Social Code? It was great. I want to know how far you can take this."
She winks at him with that look that says 'I'm in' and immediately turns to straddle her chair, sliding it past him to Quinn's desk, where she drops her elbows and holds up her head by her chin.
"Hey baby mama," she practically growls out, "my place. Seven. I'll show you a good time."
Quinn stares at her blankly, but Puck can see that she's forcing even that because her lips are quirking up at the edges. He has to wonder for a second why she works so hard to hold back that smile, and why her gaze was so damned heavy in glee, because seriously now, this is Quinn Fabray. Straightest girl in the school, right? Right? And then he has this second-long argument in his head about the sexual orientation of one Quinn Fabray while Brittany just stares at her book, closed on the desk in front of her, and Santana's gaze remains entirely unfocussed, staring off into space with her lips parted.
"That was a terrible line when he used it, and it still is now," the head cheerleader replies in a deadpan, but it's not as scathing as it should be. Rachel probably figures she's finding this as funny as everyone else is, so she winks at the girl and smirks a little more. "It's going to take a lot more than that to get me hot, Berry."
Except then the smirk turns into something a lot more devilish, and Puck has the decency to cover his mouth before his laughter starts.
"Oh, you're going to wish you didn't say that," he manages eventually, but he doesn't continue and Rachel doesn't elaborate - just turns back on her chair and moves back to her table as the lesson starts. Santana finally lets out a shuddery breath and a muttered "ah señor dulce Todopoderoso" as she comes back to the present. Rachel pats her lightly on the shoulder.
"I am not your 'sweet lord almighty', Santana, but thank you for the compliment."
Quinn almost decides to ignore it - almost - until Rachel turns back to give her this dark, coy smile that she can't take to mean anything other than 'challenge accepted', and she doesn't know how she feels about that. Puck just watches all of this with an abrupt fascination and the thought that while Rachel's new chosen game isn't the most virtuous of all activities, at least she's not breaking down in tears and covering her stitches in her bedroom right now. Also, his life is suddenly turning into a really awesome television show.
And to think, this all started with Santana breaking Finn's nose.
/-\
I'm only in this, baby, just for tonight -
But I promise that I'll leave you
I'll leave you satisfied
Author: iamsamflynn
Spoilers: A Very Glee Christmas.
Pairing: Rachel/Quinn.
Length: 4000+
Rating: up to R.
Summary: They meet Hiram Berry for the first time at the hospital, and Puck explains that this all started with a badly scheduled date.
A/N: Meet Rachel's super seduction skills.
Finn whines like a little bitch for three days before Santana finally snaps and breaks his nose.
It's not shocking, and no one protests, and Mister Schuester doesn't even yell at her, let alone send her to the principal's office. Evidently enough, even he is sick of Finn's constant barrage of 'woe is me' - which, really, is the surprising part, because Finn is practically Schuester's adopted son, courtesy of that "you remind me of myself" syndrome that a lot of the teachers have. And really, bets were on since Monday afternoon about who from the club would hit him first, so when Santana finally flings a well-aimed fist in the boy's face the worst thought in the room is "damn, there goes my twenty," not "well, shit, that must have hurt."
Really, he's been going on about how Rachel won't talk to him, and how Karofsky kicked him in the shin this morning, and how he's not allowed to go to the next party because he's been grounded until he's thirty, and he hasn't gotten to watch the latest episode of Chuck because he's not allowed to watch the television ever again, and on and on and on and on... Santana is visibly restraining herself for fifteen minutes before she leaps from her chair and smashes his nose in, and everyone is actually kind of relieved at the sound of the boy moaning and swearing on the ground, because he's not whinging out loud to himself (no one else really cares) about his punishments anymore.
"Really, Finnocence, just shut the fuck up!" the Latina growls, standing over him while he rolls around on the floor. "She doesn't want you, because you're gay and you cheated on her! And stop fucking complaining, because you're just lucky you didn't get arrested for pushing her around like that!"
No one mentions that any such event would probably lead to Puck getting arrested too - assault and battery was an interesting thing - but Finn looks cowed by it and he slinks out of the room with a bloody nose and tears in his eyes. Mister Schuester just points Santana back to her seat and crosses his arms.
"God, I am so glad his mum pulled him off the football team," Puck mutters dryly. There are a dozen separate parts to Finn's punishment - no more football being one of them, with glee probably about to follow up on that list - and Puck has come to understand that Burt and Carol still don't think there's enough. He really agrees with that.
"This week, I want you to express yourself."
There's a collective pause at Mister Schuester's ridiculously brief lesson outline before Rachel puts her hand up, and everyone's kind of relieved because she hasn't sung for them since her terrible Bon Jovi impression with Blaine on Saturday (it's Thursday now), and maybe today will be another step better than the last few days where she hasn't broken down or anything, but she's been kind of catatonic. Except she doesn't volunteer a song at all so everyone's a little on the fence about the 'progress' portion of the idea. Speaking is a benchmark though, isn't it?
"That's it? Express yourself? No specific genre?"
"No."
"Not a central artist? A decade?"
"Not at all. Individual expression."
"...Well that's just annoying," Rachel mutters dryly, closing her eyes and sinking back into Puck's arm, slung warmly around her, over the back of her chair in the risers. "But okay."
"Nothing else you want to add, Rachel?"
"Not particularly," she replies offhandedly, and the rest of the club exchanges curious looks. She sits forward rather suddenly. "Unless," she draws out, dragging all the attention back to her. Drama. Curiosity. Finn has left the room, and this is Rachel Berry, this is normal, this is relief. "You wouldn't happen to know a song that properly conveys the message 'my boyfriend cheated on me with another boy and wants me back as a gay beard, but hit me when I said no so I cracked my head open and almost drowned', would you Mister Schue?"
"...Uh... no," the teacher replies slowly, awkwardly. Rachel huffs out a sigh, right as Puck starts to grin to himself. "Sorry...?"
"Darn," she deadpans with a snap of her fingers. "Guess there's no expressing myself then."
Puck just chuckles to himself beside her while she gets this self-satisfied smirk on her face that no one else has seen on her before, and the rest of the club exchanges their discomfort as it turns to amusement. If Rachel's joking, then she's definitely feeling better today. And she's a lot more confident today, looking to her Jewish partner in crime with this look on her face that says she has a plan.
"Can I express Puck instead?"
Puck just laughs louder, snatching his arm back from its spot on the back of her chair to cover his gut through the laughter, because the thought of Rachel Berry expressing her inner Noah Puckerman is just too funny. She smiles wryly while everyone around her starts absolutely cackling at the idea.
"I'm not kidding guys. I totally have a song and everything."
The laughter just gets heavier, because the short sentence doesn't sound like the Rachel they know at all, and the thought of Rachel acting like Puck is just absurd. Puck's leaning too far to the side on his chair through his laughter, and he eventually falls to the ground, slumping on the floor with his thunderous laughter. Even Mister Schue is restraining a smile when he gestures for the girl to take the stage. She shakes her head.
"Oh, no, you're not getting it that easy. Rachzilla needs to go change," she says, and if Puck wasn't already dying then he is now.
Rachel just grabs her bag up from the ground beside him and moves to the door, disappearing into the hall with that same smirk on her face. She strides back into the room five minutes later in cargo pants and a white wife beater - there are bruises still dark on her shoulders from where Finn gripped her five days ago, but everyone tries not to pay attention to those - with her hat from their funk number so very long ago stuck on top of her head. The mirth strikes up again. Rachel just keeps up her smirk, shooting Mike a wink and Santana one of Puck's patented 'hey baby' head nods. Even Mister Schue is joining in with the full-on gut-wrenching laughter now, and Puck is still clutching his stomach on the floor, absolutely howling.
But Mike flushes a dark red and Santana does the same - only worse, because her laughter chokes off at the gesture, too, and Quinn's almost falling out of her chair too because of it.
"Holy shit!" the head cheerio manages, earning a glare from her friend. "San's gone. She's - she's better at this than he is!"
It probably helps that Rachel keeps a straight face the whole time, totally in character and standing in front of the glee club with the same swagger and stage-presence that they normally attribute to Noah Puckerman. In fact, if she were taller and distinctly less feminine, they could definitely be the same person. Feminine aesthetics ruined things. Mister Schuester manages to calm himself down after a few more moments, but he definitely has tears in his eyes, and suddenly everyone is thankful that Mercedes has her phone out to record this because it's brilliance on every other level.
"Come on guys, settle down," he calls out, even if he is wheezing a little throughout the words. "Let the girl perform!"
Still, even he can't not laugh when Rachel stomps up the steps to snatch Puck's Letterman from the back of his chair, muttering out a loud, somewhat irate "on the back of a chair? This jacket should only ever grace the shoulders of a hot Jew!" that has Puck struggling to finally climb back into his seat, body still wracked with unrestrained shakes. She strides back down to stand in front of the group with a decidedly butch swagger, in a Letterman jacket that is far too big for her, but it's still a damned good impression.
She turns back to them and gestures to a still-chuckling Artie, who rolls out to grab an electric guitar to help the rest of the band. When they finally start playing the music Puck's head thunks onto his desk to muffle the laughter because this is just too good.
"I don't want to love you, hold you,
I don't want know what you're about.
I don't need your name or number -
Just want to get in and get out"
When Puck finally collects himself - and it's hard, because his lips are still pulling up in a grin every time he look at her, copying his crude dance moves with her own fluid grace - he glances around at the rest of the group. Truth be told, this is the first time he's ever seen Rachel be so open with anyone else. Having known her since they met at synagogue (they were six, and in Lima, Ohio, there weren't that many synagogues around, so their meeting was practically inevitable), Puck has been privy to Rachel's creepy intensity and her awesome friendliness alternatively. No one else is as intimately acquainted with the girl, and he knows it, and he always has - she's socially deficient and well aware of it. She doesn't trust people, even if she pretends to, and he's glad - always has been - that she trusts him. Because when Quinn got pregnant with his kid and everyone else was running errands for her and golden boy Finn Hudson, Rachel Berry was drinking beer and playing Mario Kart with him in his bedroom, stopping him from breaking down.
And it's great being Rachel's best friend. But sometimes Puck wishes that everyone else could see how awesome his girlbro is too.
They're seeing it today - right now, in this moment - when she mercilessly pulls him apart in a musical act, copying his mannerisms and his dance moves and his expressions. Only, from the flush on Santana's cheeks and Sam's raised eyebrows and Quinn's intense gaze, Puck kind of thinks she's pulling him off better than he does. He's not offended by that in the slightest - more amused, and slightly flattered really. They're cool.
From the looks of it - and Puck's not at all surprised because he's known her for years and he knows what she's capable of - Rachel knows exactly what she's doing and exactly who she's doing it to. And when she copies some of his more suggestive dance moves - twisting them with her own natural grace until they're totally drool-worthy instead of just funny - and turns her attention directly onto Santana, he's almost dropping his jaw. Because Santana's not laughing anymore - she's burning right on up.
"Oh baby, let's not pretend.
It's no accident -
I know you'll get exactly what you need out of me."
Rachel leans in close to the cheerleader, eyes locked when she sings the words, and damn - Santana looks like she's about to leap on the girl. And it might be his girlbro and his ex-whatever, but that's hot.
Except, then Rachel whirls away like a true rocker, moving over to sing with Artie for a little while, leaving Santana with nothing more than a wink that's practically promising and Puck thinks the Latina almost faints. He also kind of thinks Quinn's gaze is a little too heated, but that can't possibly be true, because that girl's straight as an arrow. Santana? She likes hot things, and doesn't really care about the gender. Rachel?
Well, she says the jury's still out on that one, but Puck's always thought she picked personalities, not parts.
The song finishes with applause and a signature smirk - it's not Rachel's but it looks damned good on her. But the performance isn't quite over, because Rachel makes her way back over to Santana, and no one knows whether it's the tone, or the words, or the facial expression, but what follows is just perfect.
"Hey babe, what do you say to just you, me, and the back seat of my pick-up - wanna make out?"
And Puck can't help it - he falls right back off his chair and rolls down the risers in laughter, landing face down at the front of the room. It's made so much funnier by the fact that Santana almost looks like she wants to accept the offer. She doesn't - stays in her chair while Rachel goes back to her own and everyone laughs until the end of the lesson.
But Puck isn't surprised when the Latina ditches the Cheerios table to nab a seat next to Rachel at lunch. He is kind of surprised that Rachel stays in her cargoes and his Letterman, splitting her time between her own comments and the same ones everyone expects from his mouth for the rest of the day. But she's loosening up around them (finally), and it sucks that it took being shoved around and almost drowning for her to do it, but he thinks it's pretty cool that she finally is.
On top of that, lingering concern for her personal health aside, everyone seems to like this Rachel - who does the best imitation of Puck ever and doesn't wear argyle and never speaks in long paragraphs and big words. That's not surprising at all - he's always liked this Rachel. She's just used to pushing people away before they get to see her.
"Rachel's... easier," Tina tells him as soon as Santana's grabbed said diva's arm and dragged her away towards the end of their lunch period - Puck has suspicions about that, but he's not going to fault Santana's choice of new best friend. Whatever. The cheerleader won't hurt her, so he doesn't worry. He just nods at Tina, totally understanding what she means. "Is it - is it because of Saturday? Did she hit her head too hard or something? What changed?"
Puck just laughs, frowning a little.
"Nothing did. She's always been like this, it's just that no one really gets to know her," he says simply, and Tina seems a little put out by it, like she realises it too. Mercedes listens in across the table. It probably doesn't help that much that Noah Puckerman knows Rachel better than the other 'losers' in the school - he's thrown his fair share of slushies at her, and not without regret, but they have arrangements for those things that no one else will ever need to know. Puck and Rachel have been friends for years, and experts at hiding it for almost as long. "When we were little, she got a lot of crap about her dads, right? And I know that didn't change, because she still does, but by the time we got here Rach kind of just figured there wasn't a place for her out there socially, and resigned herself to that. Figured if people weren't willing to try to see past who she is at school then they aren't worth trusting with who she is at all."
"Social anxiety?" Tina asks sadly. Puck just shrugs.
"Something like that," he replies. "People weren't good to her. That's just the way things were."
"We haven't made any more effort getting to know her lately than we have before," Mercedes puts in curiously, but not unkindly. To be honest, after Santana had blabbed about Finn losing his V-card, there had been drama by the boatload until New Years, but then Finn had gotten back with Rachel and everything had settled down, and the Glee club had stopped tearing at each other's throats all the time. They weren't all sunshine and rainbows and buddy-buddy 'let's hang out on weekends' - apart from the occasional party, like their pool party on Saturday - but they weren't having a go at each other all the time, and Rachel wasn't making a big deal over all the solos, and the drama toned down. So everyone from Mercedes to Santana and back had been not friends with Rachel, but friendly on a level. They hadn't gotten to know her, but they'd stopped raging against her - and coming up on late-Spring, that was cool. "So what did change?"
"You've all been looking out for her this week," Puck tells them with a small smile. "Like friends. Or guard dogs, at times, really. But it's different for her - like, you're not doing it because you're team mates or whatever, it's because you're friends? So she's trusting you." He says it lightly, smiling all the while. But then his face clouds over with obvious rage, seriousness, warning. Rachel is his girl - not his lover, because they would wreck that scene - but his best friend and his bro - girlbro - and no one messes with her. Not anymore. This weekend scared him - it was so close, so bad. It wouldn't happen again. "Wreck her and I'll hurt you."
It's only for a moment, but it gets the message across to everyone assembled - Mercedes, Tina, Artie, and Mike. Brittany just sits on Artie's lap, staring blankly into the distance, but Puck doesn't feel the need to warn her off of anything. It's Brittany - she'd never do a thing to Rachel, or to anyone, and if she did it wouldn't be on purpose and he knows it. He yawns when the bell goes for the end of his lunch period, standing up from the table abruptly.
"Spanish time, Britt," he reminds lazily. "Later bitches."
Brittany gets up and follows him out of the cafeteria, skipping along beside him on the way to Spanish. He doesn't really know where Santana stole Rachel off to, but he kind of wants to, because they are undoubtedly hot together - the both of them share his Spanish class, so he guesses that explanation is not too far away.
He doesn't really pay much notice to Quinn when she joins the two of them on Brittany's other side, except to give her a sort of polite 'yeah, hi' nod before they reach the classroom. He's not awkward around her - in fact, with Quinn he's entirely comfortable, because having a baby does that to a person, and he does love her in a strictly non-romantic way that he doesn't really dwell on - but they don't always need to talk about things. They aren't saps. There were a few times they were, but it isn't like glimpsing the girl sent him into a spiraling abyss of doom and gloom and memories of loss and separation every damned time.
Only sometimes. That sentiment is shared.
So he and Quinn have this deep 'you were the mother/father of my baby' connection that ends in little need for continuous verbal communication and the occasional shock drop on one another's doorstep for tears and sobs and alcohol, and if anyone ever hurt the girl he'd personally take a baseball bat to their knees. But they aren't, like, besties or anything.
That is Rachel's job.
Rachel - who, with Santana - is nowhere to be seen in their Spanish classroom, but Mister Schuester is standing at the front of the class and waiting for his students, and since Schue is one of the few teachers at McKinley high that Puck actually respects, even in the slightest, he hastens to take his seat.
Santana and Rachel are not the last two people to enter the classroom - heck, they aren't even late - but they certainly are the most interesting.
Santana might have led Rachel away from the table at lunch, but it's Rachel who's dragging the Cheerio along by the hand now. The Latina looks significantly dazed, and there's the slightest stumble in her step, and he might be imagining the slightly off-centred look of her ponytail or the dishevelled look of her Cheerios jacket, but Puck doesn't think he is. Further than that, her lips seem a little redder, maybe a little plumper than normal - why does he notice these things? - and Rachel's hat is obviously on backwards, her hair a little more ruffled than before. She's definitely not dazed though - just smirking again while she leads Santana all the way to the chair in front of Brittany and takes the one in front of Puck for herself.
"Jew fist bump?" he offers as she sits down, and she grins and complies while Santana sits, blank and voiceless, to her left, staring off into space. He can't help but congratulate his friend, still sporting his Letterman. "Get some, Berry!" He hardly notices Quinn scoffing on his right and directing her gaze pointedly at Mister Schuester at the front of the room.
"San, can you help me with my Spanish after school?" Brittany asks idly, cocking her head to the side when her friend doesn't answer her for a few moments. "San?" When she isn't met with an answer again, she turns to Rachel and giggles like this is some normal occurrence. "I think you broke her, Rach."
Rachel just shrugs.
"Hey, she's the one who jumped me, okay?" is her only defense. "Really, it's not my fault she wasn't prepared for my seriously awesome making out skills."
"You're taking this me thing to heart, aren't you?" Puck asks with a smile, and she shrugs with the same expression. "You are really the best girlbro ever. Also, did I mention how great your song choice was? Social Code? It was great. I want to know how far you can take this."
She winks at him with that look that says 'I'm in' and immediately turns to straddle her chair, sliding it past him to Quinn's desk, where she drops her elbows and holds up her head by her chin.
"Hey baby mama," she practically growls out, "my place. Seven. I'll show you a good time."
Quinn stares at her blankly, but Puck can see that she's forcing even that because her lips are quirking up at the edges. He has to wonder for a second why she works so hard to hold back that smile, and why her gaze was so damned heavy in glee, because seriously now, this is Quinn Fabray. Straightest girl in the school, right? Right? And then he has this second-long argument in his head about the sexual orientation of one Quinn Fabray while Brittany just stares at her book, closed on the desk in front of her, and Santana's gaze remains entirely unfocussed, staring off into space with her lips parted.
"That was a terrible line when he used it, and it still is now," the head cheerleader replies in a deadpan, but it's not as scathing as it should be. Rachel probably figures she's finding this as funny as everyone else is, so she winks at the girl and smirks a little more. "It's going to take a lot more than that to get me hot, Berry."
Except then the smirk turns into something a lot more devilish, and Puck has the decency to cover his mouth before his laughter starts.
"Oh, you're going to wish you didn't say that," he manages eventually, but he doesn't continue and Rachel doesn't elaborate - just turns back on her chair and moves back to her table as the lesson starts. Santana finally lets out a shuddery breath and a muttered "ah señor dulce Todopoderoso" as she comes back to the present. Rachel pats her lightly on the shoulder.
"I am not your 'sweet lord almighty', Santana, but thank you for the compliment."
Quinn almost decides to ignore it - almost - until Rachel turns back to give her this dark, coy smile that she can't take to mean anything other than 'challenge accepted', and she doesn't know how she feels about that. Puck just watches all of this with an abrupt fascination and the thought that while Rachel's new chosen game isn't the most virtuous of all activities, at least she's not breaking down in tears and covering her stitches in her bedroom right now. Also, his life is suddenly turning into a really awesome television show.
And to think, this all started with Santana breaking Finn's nose.
/-\
I'm only in this, baby, just for tonight -
But I promise that I'll leave you
I'll leave you satisfied