Fic- Five Times Noah Puckerman Kisses Rachel Berry, And One Time He Can't.
Title: Five times Noah Puckerman kisses Rachel Berry, and one time he can't.
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Summary: "What would the movies say happens now?"
Rating: PG/PG-13
A/N: Not my best, but to be honest I just needed to squeeze something out. Dedicated to heroestwdw who is the victim of my ships- srsly.
Beta: No-one ): All mistakes are obviously mine.
Words: 1820
Two children, a boy and a girl in kindergarten tried valiantly to make sandcastles despite the lack of rain in the last couple of weeks making the sand- well, sandy.
“Noah?”
The boy frowned at the sand one last time before grinning at the girl, “Yeah, Rach?”
The girl twisted here pigtails before looking up at him, “Do you think I’m pretty?” She blushed and looked at her shoes, peeking up at him from underneath her bangs.
“Yeah, why?”
“Santana said I cheated at Duck, Duck, Goose and that I was ugly, and that my dancing was real bad, and that- and that,” She gasps in some air and glances over her shoulder, “And that you thought I was real ugly, and she was really, really pretty.”
Noah scrunched up his nose, “Why would I think Santana is pretty? She’s a girl, girls have germs and bad things on them. They smell, too. Like, like… the toilets that they older people use!”
“I’m a girl! Do I smell and have bad germs, and stuff?”
“What? No! Rachel, you’re… you’re different, I like you ‘cause you help me make sand castles, and you sing for me, and you made mom happy when you helped me dance for her on her birthday! Santana sits on the swings all break, and when I say ‘hello’ she runs away to the swings. She told Mrs. Hoverer that I put play dough in her hair!”
Rachel giggled, “She does play on the swings a lot,” Noah nodded his head eagerly, “But you didn’t tell me if you think I’m pretty or not. ‘Cause if you don’t I understand, Santana is real pretty, and her hair is braided and she has a mom.”
He shook his head and stood up, dragging her with him, “You’re more prettiful. If you weren’t I wouldn’t do this!”
He leant forward and kissed her lips, “See! I wouldn’t never, ever kiss Santana cause she’d play on the swings afterwards and tell everybody!”
Rachel grabbed his hand, “Thanks, Noah. You’re my best friend.”
Noah grinned, and pulled his hand away, “Am I still coming around your house after school? Cause you said your dad’s making pie. I like your dads pie.”
-
“You’ve cut your hair,” it’s a statement rather than a question or an exclamation, and he can almost feel the emptiness rolling off of her.
“Yeah.”
“Your dad finally leave?” They’re in this cornfield they found when they were 8, it’s pretty large and abandoned, and he can’t stop feeling that soon any life that they had brought to it is soon going to leave.
“Yeah,” is this goodbye? Or is he over-reacting? Probably over-reacting, Rachel won’t leave him unless he does something stupid. They’ve been best friends since kindergarten, and that sort of friendships sticks, yeah?
“Your mom okay?”
“Clinging to Sarah like she’s some sort of comfort blanket,” Maybe he should be there? No, sometimes he needs comfort too.
“You want me to bring some pie over later?”
“Pie doesn’t fix everything, Rach,” Yeah, maybe that was harsh. Maybe.
“Do you think I don’t know that? I’m 14, Noah, not 5,” Yeah, it was harsh.
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Is this turning in to an argument? He thinks it is, he hopes it’s not.
“Lets not argue today,” That sounds like a good idea, in his books, “Not after your dad.”
“What about not after my dad?” He’s leading this argument on, he knows, but he needs to blow some steam.
“Noah.”
“What? Yeah, my dad left! So what? Am I suddenly not good enough for you to converse with anymore? That’s rich coming from the girl who has two dads,” This is going too far, but his brain and mouth just aren’t connecting. “Freak.”
There it is, he’s said it. One word, one word that she’s heard from nearly everyone in this town over the years and he’s said it. The one word he swore he would never call her.
“How dare you?”
“How dare I? You think that was bad?” She’s confused, like the time his dad told her and Noah to grow up and shut up. It was a bad day then, too, but at least then Noah had held her hand and run with her.
He leans over and kisses her, “That’s all you’ll ever get , freak!”
(Later that night he tells himself that he’ll never speak to her again.)
(The next day he throws a slushie at her. The next day he’s Puck)
-
They’re making out on her bed, and all he can think about is how much he’s wanted this. About how all those cougars that know what they’re doing and moan out the wrong name don’t compare to this.
All he can think is that after tonight, there’s going to be no more cougars.
So when she pulls away and says, “I can’t,” his hearts breaks a little inside. Cause he knows, just freaking knows that she’s thinking about Finn.
Yeah, he puts his guard up and lets ‘Puck’ take over, because when he’s with Rachel…
Rachel feels like forever.
-
“You look like you could use a friend.”
Noah glances up at the doorway at Rachel, who walks over and sits next to him on the bench handing him an ice pack, “We’re friends? What about Finn? Doesn’t he need any attention?”
Rachel smiles wryly, “Finn ahs the entire team and a weeping, begging Quinn to keep him company. I doubt he’s missing me very much.”
“I’m sorry about it all, you know that, right?”
“Sorry about what? The Quinn thing?”
He puts the ice pack down and tries to ignore the pain that blinking causes, “That too, but. For everything, when we were 14, and I called you a freak. Every slushie I threw at you, when I walked away and said we weren’t friends. I’m sorry.”
She reaches over and hugs him, “You’re forgiven. You were forgiven years ago, but you have bigger problems now, and put that ice pack on, he didn’t hit you that hard- Matt slowed down the momentum- but it’ll swell like a bitch.”
He laughs loudly, “What would your dads say if they heard that language?”
Rachel grins, “Probably shake their heads and remind you of the day they walked in to find you schooling me on the pronunciation and meaning of the words. You were such a bad influence on me!”
“Like you were any better, remember in kindergarten when you pushed Santana off of her swings because she made fun of me when I kissed you?” She’s giggling, and he’s not sure if this is the right thing to be doing when his best friend wants to kill him, and the girl he knocked up is begging for the best friends forgiveness.
“Yeah, it was after she had called me ugly, you promised you would never kiss her. Guess that promise got broken, huh?” A lot of promises got broken, and right now this is healing him. He supposes that if Finn and Quinn get all the attention from everybody else, he’s allowed to do whatever he wants with Rachel.
“Suppose so, she never really changed, did she? Just instead of swings, it’s other peoples shoulders.”
“Yeah…”
“Do you think we’ll be alright eventually? Me and Finn, I mean. We’ve been bro’s for a while-”
Rachel’s staring up at him, and his tangent runs short from the way that her (newly cut) bangs hang in to her eyes, “It’s ‘Finn and I’, Noah. I don’t know, he’ll forgive Quinn. You know he will, Quinn Fabray can do no wrong,” She rolls her eyes before continuing, “He might, but it’ll take time, and if the movies are to be believed, possibly years without contact before a sudden unexpected meeting.”
Noah laughs loudly, “What would the movies say happens now?”
She blinks as he leans down, and his lips are millimetres away from hers.
“Guess.”
So he does.
-
He kisses her, and she’s beautiful.
He kisses her, and they’re married.
-
He swears that right now she’s tied for most beautiful thing in the world, “What shall we name her?”
She’s exhausted, but she’s glowing, watching him cradle their new daughter, “Belle.”
He nods, “Belle Caroline Puckerman.”
There’s a crowd of eager friends and family waiting outside, and really they should let them in to meet the new addition, but they’re taking their time, “Caroline?” She asks, and he smiles at her.
“Sweet Caroline,” he begins, but she’s fallen asleep already.
The door opens, and it’s Kurt, “They’re about to knock the walls down, just a heads up,” he’s gone before Noah can answer.
“Noah?” He turns back to her, and watches her eyes slowly flutter open again, “I love you.”
He shifts Belle in his arms, and goes over to Rachel, “I love you, too.”
She looks at the bundle of pink in his arms and smiles lazily, “Look what we made, Noah.”
He laughs slowly, and quietly, “Yeah, Rach. She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes close again, and he kisses her quickly before going to introduce everyone to their daughter. Opening the door he calls out softly, “Hey, look who we made.”
-
She’s so still, and it’s not right. She’s always talking, moving, doing something.
Belle’s outside crying, but he doesn’t have the strength to go out and tell her that he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her mom. He just doesn’t know.
He can’t kiss her, he can’t ground him self. There’s a tube in the way, and he’s so scared that if he touches her she’s break, that she’ll disappear.
There’s a sound outside the door, and Finn’s voice breaks through the glass demanding to know what’s happened, but he can’t go out there and tell them all. Can’t tell them how it’s touch and go, he can’t.
The monitor is steady, but he can’t take any comfort from it- it shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t be here, she shouldn’t be here. They should be at home, have dinner, or lunch. Whatever the time is now.
They shouldn’t be here.
He touches her hand (is that too cold?) and the monitor spikes, so he jumps back again. Did he do something? Should he get someone?
No, there would be questions then. He can’t handle questions right now. Not til she’s better. Not til she’s Rachel again, because this isn’t Rachel.
This is her body, you can’t be a person without your soul, and right now all he wants is for her to wake up and be alright.
Because he needs that.
He needs her, because somewhere in their lives they became something to each other, and at the moment he’s not sure whether he could live without her.
He sits down on the chair beside her and watches her chest rise and fall.