my favourite place was me and you: chapter 3
Title: my favourite place was me and you
Author: Kiki
Fandom: Glee
Pairing/Character(s): Puck/Rachel/Santana, Rache/OMC undertones
Rating: M
Word count: 2868
Spoilers: None, futurefic
Summary: Rachel is forced to leave the spotlight and return home to face the people she sold for her dream.
Disclaimer. None of this is mine.
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Her favourite days are Thursdays.
She has no classes and nothing but a dance workshop in the evening. It's Santana's one free day too.
Once she would have spent the day studying or performing for some future audience in her room, but things are different now.
She lays around in the lounge, affecting preoccupation with one thing or another.
Sometime around lunch Santana pulls herself out of bed.
Rachel made a pact with herself at the beginning of the year: no matter how much she wanted things to work out, she wouldn't crowd her roommate.
She used to bite her lip, waiting impatiently to see what Santana did.
Not anymore.
She knows Santana will grab a bowl of sugary cereal and curl up on the lounge beside her. They make jokes about the Orange County housewives that should never be seen on television and laugh about how terrified every news presenter on Fox looks.
She lets Santana crimp her hair for half an hour, turning her into some 90s bubblegum band reject, and doesn't complain. Mainly because she's almost certain this is what girlfriends do, not that she's ever had a reason to know this. She also likes the feel of Santana's fingers running over her scalp, parting her hair, gentle and efficient.
Early one morning she sits on the kitchen bench in her exercise outfit, sipping from her water bottle. Puck is talking emphatically about some grunt job he applied for at an architectural firm. His hazel eyes are lit in a way she's rarely seen-a part from when he talks about sex, girls he wants to have sex with, or girls he's already had sex with. And she's so happy that he's finally found something to dream for that she doesn't realise he's standing between her legs, large hands resting just above her knees, until Santana walks down the stairs and glances disdainfully between the two of them.
Santana pours herself a coffee as Puck disappears for a shower.
Coward.
Rachel stares at her lap, waiting for some finger-wagging threat.
She probably deserves it.
Flirting with the guy who just crawled from your roommates sheets is a pretty slutty move.
Santana leans over the bench beside her. Sleep still weighing heavily on her.
She gives a silent yawn before her dark eyes sharpen. "Play it safe, Berry. Guys like Puck ruin girls like you every day."
She smacks her lips against Rachel's cheek to soften her words before carrying her coffee back to bed.
Rachel stops biting her lip after that.
Because she's never seen Santana that gentle with anyone but Brittany.
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I think of you every night and day
You took my heart and you took my pride away...
I hate myself for loving you
-Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
}{
Santana heads for the back door of the bar after her shift, slinging her handbag over her back. It tends to get heavier throughout the day. Or her arm gets weaker. Whatever.
Puck is relaxing in the alleyway, staring upwards like he hasn't been waiting for half an hour. She probably would have screamed, or made some other overly girly noise of fear, but the well-practiced pose of apathy-one foot braced against the filthy wall, cigarette dangling by his hip-couldn't be mistaken for anyone else, even in the unlit backstreet.
She stands beside him, unconsciously mimicking his stance. He hands her the cigarette without looking and she takes a deep inhale that burns her throat and makes her mind go blank.
She really had given up years ago.
Kind of.
"What are you doing?" she asks, handing back the smoke, silently promising herself that was her last fun for the year.
"What are you doing?" he asks, voice hoarser than it should be.
Santana barely resists rolling her eyes. What had she done to deserve such clever friends?
"Last night, Puck. That's the first time I saw her."
"Like I fucking care." He kicks off from the wall, stalking down the alley aimlessly. An innocent can makes the mistake of getting in his way and gets booted out of sight. "And you sure seemed pretty fucking cosy for having met last night."
Santana snickers. "So you say. You weren't there when she tried to separate my eyes from their sockets." She follows a few steps behind. She knows better than to crowd Puck when he gets in a mood.
He shoots her a disbelieving look over his shoulder before his mouth clamps down on whatever questions he so clearly wants to ask. "Yeah, whatever. What's she doing here anyway?"
"Didn't say." Santana balances her bag on the hood of her car while unlocking the door. "Think she's got an injury or something." She tries to read Puck's expression while simultaneously trying not to look at him. She knows he only gets that angry when he's scared of something. She'd put good money on Puck's biggest concern being getting sucked back into Rachel's crazy. She sort of knows the feeling.
"What did-"
"That's all I know, Puckerman. If you want detailed notes on Berry's schedule then you'll have to go to the source," she snaps. She sits in the front of her car and digs at the gravel of the parking lot with the tip of her boot. She's got her own issues with Rachel and she's not going to spend the rest of the week coddling Puck's years old sulk.
"I think I'll be right," he replies harshly.
Santana glares up at him. She didn't want to get between this, but when had she ever been able to keep quiet? "You're a fucking pussy, you know that?" Puck's lips turn unpleasantly, but she continues before he can respond, "I can't believe you couldn't even man up enough to talk to her. Not once! You should have done that much."
His mouth opens in astonishment. "You're as insane as she is if you think I need to explain myself to that slut," he says tightly.
She's called Rachel a lot worse over the years, but Puck saying it makes her uneasy. Maybe because she'd never seen a guy more in love than Puck had been with Rachel and it seems wrong for that to turn into something so ugly. Maybe it's because Rachel's here now and that makes it really hard for her to pretend they weren't friends, makes it harder to not say something in her defence.
"Yeah, then I'm insane," she rebukes quietly. "Tell her everything Puck. Then hate her as much as you want. Just let her know why first."
"Why the fuck does she even deserve that much?"
"Because she's Rachel!" Santana screams, before remembering she worked only ten feet away. But this was Rachel they were talking about. Rachel who colour coded their timetables, who complained about their diet, who fought for them, who had been the best friend she'd ever known…
Puck shakes his head. "You're so fucking wrong. That girl isn't the Rachel we knew, okay? You wanna know how she tore her knee? She had a seizure because she was so fucking jacked up on Addy." He had to pause for a second before continuing, because the thought still made him insanely angry. "You want to know why she's even still got a job? Because she's fucking her director. Who's married. Who has a wife and kids. Who probably had a decent enough home before Rachel decided she wanted to become his number one star," he spits. Those heated eyes turn on her and she's never seen him look so malevolent before. Or so pained. "Does that sound like any Rachel Berry you know?"
Santana bows her head. It physically hurts to meet his eyes. No. That really doesn't sound like Rachel. Her heart beats painfully in her chest. She can't be angry or disappointed or anything but sad, because she's sitting in an empty parking lot, learning, probably years after the fact, about the girl that she'd once sworn she'd do anything for.
She should have been there.
Puck shouldn't have to be telling her these things, because she should already know.
And most of all, she shouldn't have helped break Rachel in the first place.
She rubs one hand over her breast. Her chest aches and her eyes sting uselessly.
She levels him with the hardest stare she can manage. "How do you know all that, Puck?"
He drops the butt of his smoke to the ground, screwing it under his shoe. There are excuses he could make-excuses that Santana would never buy.
"Still keeping tabs, huh?" she asks without much humour. "No, you don't need to talk to her at all," she adds sarcastically, "because it's so fucking clear that we're all doing just fine the way things are."
Puck scrubs a hand over his face. He feels hot all over, like his blood was rushing too fast. "Did you ever think, San, that maybe I didn't want to hurt her any more? That maybe I took the easiest way out for both of us?"
She eyes him distrustfully. "Not really. And if that's the truth, then you're as dumb as you look."
She was going to invite him home, but she really isn't in the mood anymore, so she leaves him in the alone in the parking lot glaring at him in rear vision mirror till he was nothing but a blur.
She knows it's not his fault.
It doesn't make her hurt any less.
}{
Rachel lays awake in her childhood bed. Even after years it still smells like home. Her cream comforter is probably the softest thing she's ever felt; she'll have to take it with her. Julian refuses to believe it's the greatest comforter on Earth without proof.
Still she can't quite sleep through the pounding of her heart. The thumping actually sounds like it's coming from inside her ears. Her legs twitch restlessly, and even if she could stay still, her eyelids are refusing to stay down.
No more pep pills in the afternoon, she reminds herself sternly.
Instead of spending uncomfortable hours in bed she decides to use her time productively.
After all, many insomniacs used their disorder to their advantage. What would Napoleon Bonaparte have accomplished if he'd wasted a third of his life?
She sets her sights a little lower. After all, Europe can wait till she's done a couple dozen laps.
She's happy her daddy sprung for a heated pool.
She'll hug him before he goes to work.
Her leg feels stiff and uncooperative, but her doctor had insisted water exercises would be beneficial.
She's on to her ninth lap when she spots the shadowy figure on the pool chairs. It doesn't really surprise her. Puck always watched her swim. After he left it had felt weird to be in water without his presence.
She crosses her arms on the edge of the pool, body floating limply in the water below her.
There's probably a lot of things to say, but the words dry up, swallowed whole by whatever emotion leaves her so paralysed she can barely breathe. In the end she just trembles (she'll have to get the pool thermometer checked) and tries to hide her expression.
"Hey," he greets stoically.
She wants to see what's on his face, but he's almost hidden in the shadows.
"Noah."
She really meant that to be a greeting, but it ended up coming out somewhere between a plea and a whimper. She takes a deep breath and pulls on an impressively cool show face.
You are Rachel Berry, soon to be star of Broadway, and you will not cry at Noah Puckerman's feet like a wounded puppy begging for more abuse!
She repeats her mantra of you are Rachel Berry, like it still means something, until she can look him in the eyes, or at least where she thinks his eyes are, without wanting to cry and scream.
"I'm not like a stalker or whatever," he informs her when the silence becomes uncomfortable.
"I didn't think you were." A stalker wouldn't have spent the last twenty months hiding from her.
"Was going home when I spotted the back lights on." Sure his house was thirteen miles in the opposite direction, but that wasn't the point. "Though I'd check everything was okay."
"It is." If he wants to lie, then she can too.
"Okay then. Good," he mumbles, standing quickly. "I guess I'll go."
Rachel lets out a high laugh. (She doesn't know who she's pretending to be anymore-probably someone who's not a quivering mess). "That's it? You have nothing else to say to me!" She shimmies out of the water, planting her hands on her hips and striking a pose of absolute indignation.
Puck glares, eyes skimming over her quickly before he turns away. He swallows, but the tightness in his throat only gets worse.
His silence only seems to infuriate her more. "You did not come here just to check on my father's house! You didn't!" she half begs.
His hands clench into fists. He grabs Rachel's mauve towel (knowing it's her fault he knows it's mauve) and holds it out, still not facing her. "Can you-?" He shoves the towel a bit closer. "I can't talk to you when you're…" He licks his lips and for the millionth time tells his dick to shut the fuck up for five seconds. He might know better, but obviously all his body knows is his only long-term girlfriend is standing in front of him in a skin tight bathing suit, dripping wet, and so fucking gorgeous it makes him sick. "Put on the fucking towel, Berry."
Sheer perversity makes her grab the towel and let it dangle from her fingers. She can't believe he thinks he can tell her what to do.
Puck glances back at her, struggling to make eye contact. "Please." It hurts to ask, but he's pretty sure it's the only way anything coherent is going to come out of his mouth.
She wraps the towel around herself, hugging it close to her chilled skin.
"Why are you here, Noah?"
It takes him a while to answer. "I don't even know." Because Santana's an evil bitch with voodoo powers, is the obvious answer.
While he drove around her block three times, he probably should have remembered he didn't have a thing to say to her. "How long are you here for?"
"Why? Planning an extended trip till I leave?" she asks tartly.
It really fucking sucks that she knows him so well, because that was exactly what he was planning.
Rachel seems to sense this. "Don't bother. I can assure you, I have no intention of crowding you. I'm not here to beg you to come back, if that's the delusion your oversized ego concocted." She crosses her arms and glares fiercely up at him.
Every word, inflection, mannerism, is so very Rachel that it steals his breath He'd tried-for so long-to convince himself that the Rachel who was his no longer existed, having her in front of him ruined all the lies he'd told himself.
For a second the world feels unsteady below his feet.
"Whatever. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't going to be any drama," he bites out, almost scoffing, because it's way too late for that now.
"Drama?" Rachel's voice goes thin and high, and Puck's pretty familiar with that tone. "Yes, how could I dare to bring drama into your life? That would be awfully inconsiderate of me, to come into your life and ruin it like that. What possible reason could I have to subject you to that ill treatment?" And she doesn't want to say it, doesn't want to even bring it up, because she's not sure her heart won't shatter just from thinking about it, but still it wouldn't be a tangent if she didn't manage to humiliate herself in some way. "After all, the only thing you ever did was abandon me, without a word, without-without anything!"
Her last words take a while to die on the night air, and when they do the silence seems even more suffocating.
That she isn't on the ground bawling her eyes out is a testament to her acting abilities, because she knows she'll spend the rest of the night doing just that.
It takes Puck a minute, because all he can think about is how if he opens his mouth, Rachel's going to cry and he's going to break something, and then the anger settles in. Why the fuck should he feel guilty? "What a brilliant little actress you turned out to be," he mutters snidely. She turns to him in shock. "As if you don't know why I left." For once Rachel is speechless. "What-thefuck-ever. I'm not doing this. I won't."
Rachel's fingers clench around her stomach. It tenses with phantom cramps. "Tell me?" she asks, voice stressy and weak. She doesn't want to know, can't, goes cold just at the thought of what he might say.
Puck doesn't answer.
He knows she can't hear it any more than he can say it.
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