may your days be gold; part 3/4
title: may your days be gold; part three: give me crazy love
rating: r
disclaimer: i don't own glee. i imagine if i did it would take away the sting of failing out of school.
spoilers: up to 1.13 just to be safe.
pairings: rachel/puck
summary: a series of 4 interlocking drabbles about how puck and rachel's relationship changes.
author's note: this chapter was a tough one to write. puck and rachel are hard characters to crack. and writing for characters still in high school is tough for me, too, because apparently, i'm older than i thought.
Rachel has always loved the first day of school. The promise it brings. The hope of endless possibilities. The chance to start fresh. The opportunity to talk her dads into buying her a new wardrobe.
As Rachel walks down the halls of McKinley High on the first day of her junior year, with her new notebooks and her new plaid skirt, she doesn’t feel that same optimism she normally does.
She feels like a different girl than the one she was the last time she walked down these halls. Her summer with Puck has left her transformed.
It has left her older, wiser, sadder.
And she feels all of those things acutely when she catches sight of Puck. He is headed in her direction, surrounded by football player friends and trailed by giggling cheerleaders. He doesn’t even pause when he passes her.
That is how she knows whatever they had has come to an end.
---
An entire day passes without so much as glance from Puck, despite them sharing three classes together.
When the bell sounds, dismissing them from their final class, and Puck rushes to the door, slipping right past Rachel, she begins to believe she dreamt up their entire summer together. The warm, chlorinated water, the cool, murky water of the lake, the warmth of Puck’s tanned skin beneath her hands, the feel of his lips against hers. Rachel begins to chalk it up to another well-crafted fantasy of hers.
It’s either that, or Puck has just become another name on the long list of people who disappoint her. Despite his warning the night before that he would most assuredly let her down, it is still not an easy pill to swallow.
Which is why she chooses to believe the former because it’s easier for her heart to handle.
---
When glee assembles for their first official meeting of the school year, Rachel sits among her fellow glee clubbers and holds her breath until Puck walks in. When he catches her eye across the room, her heart drops and she knows she did not dream up their summer - it was all real.
It makes her heart hurt.
He takes the seat furthest from her and the pain is almost unbearable.
Mr. Schuester finally joins them and calls the meeting to order. He attempts to motivate them with talk of sectionals and regionals and even nationals. He talks of the changes he’d like to make to the club this year to make them even better than the last.
Mercedes mumbles (loudly) that it’d be a nice change if Rachel stopped acting like a diva and didn’t get every solo.
While Rachel’s first instinct is to ignore Mercedes and remain prim and proper and unaffected in her seat, Rachel can not do that. So, she turns in her chair, her eyes narrowing on Mercedes. “I’m sorry, Mercedes, if you have something to say to me, I’d appreciate it if you said it to my face.”
Mercedes looks shocked. As does the rest of the glee club. But she quickly recovers and says, “I said it would be nice if you didn’t get every solo.”
“I don’t believe that I do,” Rachel replies as curtly as possible. “I can think of numerous times last year that I didn’t get a solo. Or solos that were ripped away from me and given to one of you in the interest of fairness. Of course, it wasn’t fair to me. But, no one really cares about being fair to me, do they? Or being nice to me. Like you just demonstrated by saying something rude behind my back.”
“Rachel,” Mr. Schuester tries to cut in.
“No, Mr. Schuester, I think they should hear this.” She gets out of her seat and turns to face them. “I know that none of you like me. As hard as I’ve tried to be your friend, I realize that’s never going to happen as you all seem to harbor some unknown resentment towards me. I can live with that. But the least you can do is show some respect for your fellow teammate. Because as much as I love glee, I cant be here if you don’t respect me.”
“Is this where you storm out?” Kurt asks with a roll of his eyes.
“No. This is where I wait for you all to choose if you want me here.”
There is silence and Rachel feels her heart begin to drop.
“She stays,” Puck says gruffly. “No one here is as talented as she is.”
She meets his eyes and manages a grateful smile.
“I agree,” Tina says. “We need her if we have any chance of winning.”
The others agree as well. Mercedes, Kurt, and Santana are slower in relenting, but they finally do and the meeting continues without incident.
Rachel is shown more respect after that.
And if she didn’t know better, she’d even say they begin to become her friends.
---
After glee club disbands for the day and everyone has left, Puck makes his way to where Rachel is slowly packing up her belongings.
“Hey,” he greets her softly.
She looks up from her things, surprised to see him at her side. “Hey.”
“What you said today? To Mercedes? That was pretty fucking awesome.”
She smirks, ignoring his crass language, and simply says, “Thanks.”
“I guess you finally got pissed enough to tell someone off. It’s about time.”
“I guess I was just sick of giving people the right to treat me badly.” She picks up her bag and looks into his eyes. “And I’m tired of people always letting me down.”
He looks away.
“It was time to show people I’m not going to take it anymore. I deserve better than that. I learned that from a friend.”
He looks at her again and begins to smile.
“An old friend,” she adds before brushing past him.
His smile falls.
And if Puck thought he had a heart, that would be falling, too.
---
Puck quickly comes to the (somewhat-shocking) realization that he actually misses Rachel Berry.
It is hard to transition from her being a staple in his every day life to not having her at all. Days without Rachel are harder than he anticipated.
Of course, he misses the fun physical aspects of having Rachel in his day-to-day life. The way she would pounce on him if he sang her Sweet Caroline and the flick of her tongue would cause him to hit all the high notes. Or the way her breasts felt crushed beneath him when they went a little too far. And he misses her breathless humming when his lips moved over all the right spots along the column of her throat.
But he misses the rest of her, too. Her contagious laugh. Her ability to go on for hours about the most meaningless things in the world. And the way she can be perfectly silent and still when it means the most.
She is still present.
She’s in a couple of his classes (he’s not sure how many, he rarely goes) and she’s in glee with him in the afternoons. But she does not speak to him or even look at him.
For her part, she ignores him.
While at one point, Puck believed that everyone in the world was one more disappointment to Rachel, he begins to think it’s not even possible to disappoint her.
And Puck thinks that, really, he just let himself down by pissing away the one real friendship he ever had.
It’s a bitch.
---
In between classes one day, when Puck feels the absence of Rachel a little too intensely, he finds her in the hallway and strides over to where she stands at her locker.
“Hey. You got a sec?”
She looks up at him suspiciously.
He didn’t really have a purpose in mind, or a plan, which he now considers might have been a good idea because she’s staring up at him so expectantly like she actually wants him to say something.
“Did you need something?” she finally asks him because she cant be late for biology. Her punctuality is one trait she admires most about herself, naturally.
And because she really cant handle the way he’s looking down at her, causing her heart to beat in that hauntingly familiar rhythm.
Puck cant help but wince at how she annoyed she sounds with him. He opens his mouth to speak - to snap out some sarcastic comment to get back at her - but he cant seem to get the words out.
“You can borrow my history notes if you want. And English,” she tells him before she turns back to her locker.
“That’s not… I don’t give a damn about any of that crap.”
She continues to ignore him as he continues to stand beside her.
The silence continues to build and it makes him uncomfortable, especially considering the longest he’s ever been in Rachel’s company and she hasn’t said a word is, like, 30 seconds. And the only thing he can think to say, he blurts out, “I miss you.”
Rachel falters for just a moment. Her breath catches and her fingers curl into the door of her locker. She stands still for a long moment before she can look at him. And while her heart beats at a sickeningly fast rhythm that makes her want to simultaneously throw up and pass out, she says softly, “I cant. I just cant do this.”
She pushes her history and English notes into his hands before she closes her locker and turns to walk away from him.
“Rachel,” he calls after her.
She stops, turning her head slightly (but doesn’t quite meet his eyes), she tells him quietly, “It’s not suppose to hurt this much, remember?”
Puck thinks if he had a heart, it would be breaking.
The painful aching in his chest is just a coincidence.
---
When Puck sees Rachel laughing and smiling in the hallway with Brian Douglas, he believes that his initial reaction of wanting to punch Brian in his stupid face has to do with the fact that he hates Brian for calling him a sissy in the eighth grade and not a single thing to do with Rachel.
Even if she’s doing that stupid hair-flipping thing and touching Brian’s shoulder in an attempt to do something normal people call flirting. He’s not sure if Rachel’s version is similar to a normal teenager’s, but it seems to do the trick because Brian is practically drooling.
But Puck would not call what he feels jealousy. Not even when his hands curl into fists at his sides when he watches Brian watch Rachel bounce away.
Not even when he’s pushing Brian against the lockers and threatening him within an inch of his life if he so much as looks at Rachel, would Puck call what he feels jealously.
---
Puck’s first reaction is to act out. To retaliate against what he feels.
It is in his nature to grab the easiest and closest cheerleader and make her beg to be with him until Rachel Berry becomes a bad memory.
But when he takes Summer Phillips behind the bleachers during math, he cant get the taste of Rachel out of his mouth.
So, Puck stalks back to class and when he spots Rachel seated primly beside Brian Douglas, he decides to employ a new tactic.
Instead of taking his usual seat in the back corner, he plops himself down beside Rachel in the front row. She glances over at him nervously, but quickly returns her attention to Mrs. Cole.
All he can do is smile while he watches her fidget for the rest of the class.
---
“It’s not going to work, ya know,” Puck breathes into Rachel’s ear after math class one afternoon, after she refused his offer to partner on a project and turned to Brian instead.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she maintains.
“Trying to make me jealous with that pussy, Brian? It’s not going to work.”
Rachel shrugs. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“Right. Because always you go for dumb jocks just like him,” he drawls sarcastically.
She gives him a meaningful look and he’s quick to remember Finn.
“Whatever. Just know, that this little act of liking Brian to make me jealous is not going to work.”
“Okay,” she sings as she makes her way out of the classroom.
“It’s not going to work,” he grumbles to himself.
But it totally is.
---
When Kurt throws a bitch fit during rehearsal one afternoon about Rachel, Puck steps up to defend her a little too quickly. He even shoves him, but when Kurt falls too easily into the drums, he realizes he might have pushed a little too hard.
“Noah!” Rachel cries.
“What?” Puck demands. “He cant treat you like that. He cant talk that way to you and get away with it.”
He storms out of the choir room, fists clenched at his sides.
Rachel is torn between helping Finn pick Kurt up and running after Puck.
---
Rachel chooses Puck and finds him on the steps outside of school.
“Why do you keep doing things like that?”
“Like what?”
“Pushing Kurt around. Threatening Brian. Sticking up for me. We’re not friends, remember? Those are your terms, Noah, and I’m just trying to honor them. But if you insist on breaking the rules, then…”
“Then what?”
“Then I cant pretend this summer never happened.”
“What if I don’t want to pretend it never happened?” he asks. But his voice is so low that he almost hopes she doesn’t hear him.
But she does and she reminds him, “You do. Because this is who you need to be right now.”
She descends down the steps, but he catches her wrist when she goes past him and stops her.
“What if I want to be better?”
Rachel sighs and she manages to look down at him with a smile. Albeit the saddest one he’s ever seen. “Then you need to do that for yourself.” She pulls her arm away. “Please. Just don’t make this any harder than it already is.”
He lets her walk away.
---
Puck can easily mark the three hardest days of his life on the calendar.
The first being the day his father left his mother. The second being the day he and Quinn gave their daughter away. And the third is when Quinn comes to him with an update of how their daughter is doing with her new parents and leaves him with a fucking picture of a little girl that has his eyes.
It’s like rubbing salt in a wound.
A wound that only started to heal after Rachel weaved her way into his life and replaced the memories of that dark, hopeless day with bright, vibrant ones.
But now it’s open and he think he feels the pain just as intensely as he did the day he was forced to give her up.
The anger builds and the only way he knows how to release it is to punch and kick and throw everything that crosses his path.
He just happens to be in the choir room when Quinn delivers this information so the plastic chairs (which he already kinda hated before this) and the instruments receive a beating.
The crash of cymbals and the crushing of a guitar vibrate within his mind and the only thing that can break through the noise is his name being screamed out repeatedly.
With a saxophone (his next victim) in his hands, he turns to find Rachel standing horrified in the doorway.
“Noah,” she breathes as she carefully crosses the room to get to him.
When she is before him, she takes hold of his arm and coaxes him to lower the instrument to the ground. “Noah. What is it?”
He shows her the picture of the baby with his eyes.
She wraps herself around him, holding herself as hard as she can against him.
“It’s okay,” she whispers in his ear. “It’s going to be okay.”
Slowly, they sink to the ground among the broken pieces of his rampage. They cling to one another as they cry.
---
When Puck cant sleep, he finds himself at Rachel’s house in the middle of the night with his guitar.
He sings Just the Way You Are in her front yard, below her window, until she finally opens the door and stomps outside in her pajamas, her hands slung low on her hips and her eyes narrowed on him.
“My dads would like me to get rid of the cute hooligan before the neighbors call the cops,” she tells him.
“Did you like it?”
She rolls her eyes and sighs because the answer is so obvious to her. “Yes. Of course. It was beautiful.”
The stand across from one another in silence.
Rachel finally asks, “What are you doing here, Noah?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
Puck finally abandons his guitar and strides towards her. “Here’s the thing, Rachel. No one has been there for me like you have. After we had to give away the baby… it was you helped me get through all of that. This summer. And today. You were a good friend to me and I have been a dick to you. Because… god,” he actually growls in frustration, running his hands over his face.
“Noah,” she insists, pulling him back to her.
“The thing is… I know I’m an ass. I’m that way to most people. Some people stick around in spite of it. My mother, Finn… you. Most of them don’t, but that’s okay, because I deserve it. I treat people like shit until they cant take it anymore and I lose really good things - like Quinn and the baby. I probably don’t deserve to be a dad to that baby for throwing slushies in your face and throwing Kurt into that dumpster. Just like I don’t deserve you.”
“That’s what you think?” she asks him breathlessly. “That you don’t deserve me?”
He shrugs and keeps his eyes on the grass rather than looking at her. “Despite you being absolutely insane and annoying the crap out me most of the time, yeah.”
“You’re an idiot,” she laughs and it shocks him enough to look up at her. “If you think you don’t deserve good things, you’re never going to have them. And if you think you don’t deserve me, well… you’re wrong.”
“Rachel,” he sighs.
“Yes, you’re a jerk and you treat people badly sometimes. And you do things to keep people away. But, look at me, I lack tact and I ramble and I probably don’t express empathy very well. And I do things to keep people away.”
“So…”
“So… if you don’t deserve me then I don’t deserve you.”
He laughs nervously and rubs at the back of his head. “Come on, Rach…”
“What are you doing at my house in the middle of the night, Noah?” she asks again.
“Look, Rachel, I’m not good with the words or whatever. Not like you are. I don’t know very many big ones and I usually fuck up the small ones. I just know that I miss you. I miss the way things were between us this summer. And I just want us to go back to the way things were, when they were good. Can we please do that? I know it’s a lot to ask, especially because I royally fucked up, but…”
“You’re wrong,” she interjects. “Again.”
“What?” he breathes. He takes a step back. His heart begins to freefall in the direction of the grass beneath his feet.
“You’re actually really, really good with words.”
Puck has just enough time to see her smirk before she’s launching herself into his arms and her mouth is pressed firmly against his.
“Hey Rachel?” Puck asks, tearing his mouth from hers.
“Yeah?” She feels a little lightheaded and has to hold tight to his arms to keep herself from swaying.
“There was something else I wanted to tell you.”
She feels her heart hammer in her chest, so she grips his arms a little tighter.
“Cute pajamas.”
Rachel pushes him. Hard. He falls to the ground, but he’s laughing as he goes.
He pulls her down with him and they’re both laughing so hard that even when Rachel’s fathers turn on the sprinklers, all they can do is laugh even harder.
---
Puck is quick to realize (although it does not surprise him one little bit) that they key to getting Rachel to do anything is music.
So, when he suggests that they keep their relationship - whatever it is, they haven’t worked their way up to definitions just yet - on the down low, he convinces her by singing My Girl about fifty times.
When he tries to get her to make out with her in his truck instead of going to first period, he sings Wonderwall.
They spend the first two periods making out in his truck.
And when he’s trying to get her to ditch history and meet him in the janitor’s closet instead, only the promise of singing I’ll Be is enough to make her join him.
It’s not even a blow to his sexual prowess that the promise of singing over whatever sexual act he has in mind to perform on her is what entices her to do things. Because when his fingers are buried deep inside of her and she’s chanting his name breathlessly in his ear, he’s certain he’s the only thing on her mind. And not even sappy lyrics of a dumb love song can make her feel like he does when he flicks his fingers against that sensitive little bundle of nerves and his teeth scrap against her nipple.
But when her lips are wrapped tightly around his length, his hands buried in her hair, and he’s screaming her name (he sang her Sweet Caroline - her favorite - that afternoon) he’s pretty sure that he’s not in control of a single thing Rachel Berry does - pretty love songs or not.
Because when she looks up at him with those big brown eyes, innocent even when she’s on her knees before him, he thinks she’s the one with all the power.
He doesn’t mind.
Especially when her tongue swirls around his tip and he sees stars.
Gold ones.
---
They sneak around the halls of school, hiding from their classmates. They sneak around their homes, hiding from their parents.
It’s reminiscent of the summer they spent in their little bubble, just the two of them.
Sometimes it’s absolutely thrilling.
But sometimes it’s downright tiring.
---
They are discovered making out in the empty choir room one afternoon before glee.
As Rachel sits on the piano, wrapped around Puck, they hear a collective gasp from the doorway and a mingling of, “Oh!” “Oh my god!” and “My eyes, my eyes!”
At the sight of three of their fellow glee club members - Kurt, Mercedes, and Artie - Puck tears away from Rachel and puts at least ten steps between them.
“What’s going on with you guys?” Mercedes asks, looking between them,
“Nothing,” Puck tells them quickly, stalking over to the corner and picking up a guitar while ignoring their eyes on him.
“Yeah, nothing,” Rachel repeats as she slides down from the piano and straightens her skirt.
When she looks over at Puck and he refuses to meet her eyes, she resolves not to cry.
But when she hears him threatening Kurt, Mercedes, and Artie not to say a word to anyone, that resolution goes out the window.
---
Rachel does not speak to Puck for three days.
At one time he would consider that a reward, not a punishment. But now all he can think of is how miserable he is without her.
And when she’s not a part of his life, he reverts back to his old ways. He’s more apt to bully the underdogs, to throw slushies at unsuspecting freshman, and basically be an ass to anyone who gets in his way.
He’d almost admit he’s happier (and nicer) when Rachel’s a fixture in his life.
He’d also almost admit he’s happier when he has someone who will actually listen to him moan about the problems of his day or will make him laugh by saying the craziest stuff. Someone to waste away afternoons and evenings with.
He’d almost admit that stuff.
But he’s not really into sissy crap like that.
Even if he’d do just about anything to get it all back.
---
On the fourth day, the silence is too much and he storms after Rachel in the parking lot and catches her before she can slip into her car.
“Are you ever going to talk to me again?” he demands. He does so indignantly, like he has a right to be mad. He knows he doesn’t, but he’s hoping that maybe he can trick her into thinking he does.
“I don’t know, Noah. Are you ever going to be okay with being with me?”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“No? Because I was under the impression that you didn’t want anyone to know about our relationship, such as it is. And if you don’t want people to know we’re, well… whatever we are, then maybe we shouldn’t be together at all.”
“Is that really what you want?”
“No,” she admits in a whisper. “But I cant keep doing this. It hurts too much.”
“And it’s not suppose to hurt,” he says softly.
“I don’t know. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it is suppose to hurt. Maybe that’s all love is.”
He looks up at her in surprise and he means to tell her something, but she looks away, and he cant seem to remember what it is.
“Rachel,” he breathes. “I want to be with you.”
“Just not in front of everyone else,” she reminds him. “And that’s okay. I understand that you have a certain reputation you need to uphold at this school in order to survive. You need a certain defense, so you’ve adopted that bully, badass complex, and that means that you can never be with someone like me. Not seriously. And not in front of the entire school.”
“You think you know me so well,” he drawls and he means to tease her because she’s nailed him on the head, really, and he doesn’t want her to know.
But he’s knows Rachel’s not stupid.
“And you know, a romance with a high school bad boy isn’t really in my plan,” she quips as she falls easily into that guarded Rachel-Berry-thing she does so well. She’s that driven girl with no heart once again. “You’re only going to deter me from what I really want, so it’s best if we end things now.”
“You’re breaking up with me again?”
She steps around him and opens her car door. “Don’t worry,” she tells him as she slides into the car. “I wont tell.”
---
Puck decides the only way to get Rachel back is to take a page from her book.
He needs a plan.
A good one.
The only thing is, he’s more of a wing-it type of guy than a guy who makes plans.
So, he decides that his plan will involve music and that’s as far as he gets. Because plans aren’t really his thing.
He just hopes the rest comes to him when he’s before Rachel. And the rest of the school because that’s the only other part of his plan he figures out.
He’ll put it all into action during their performance for the entire school.
Sure, it’s sappy and cheesy and it’s been done about a thousand times in every stupid teenage chick flick Rachel’s ever forced him to watch.
But he thinks it’s just crazy enough to get her back.
---
Puck pleads his case to Mr. Schuester who allows him to put his plan into action during their assembly for the entire school.
While the other glee clubbers wait in the wings of the stage while Mr. Schuester is announcing them to those crammed inside the theatre, Puck picks up his guitar and walks onto center stage. He ignores the calls from his teammates that it’s not time yet.
Mr. Schue steps aside, letting Puck takes his place in the middle of the stage and looks out at the questioning (and rather unhappy) faces of his classmates, he think he should have had a better plan than this.
“Uh. This is for, um…” he starts uneasily, but he glances stage left and spies Rachel’s questioning face and the words come easier. “This is for someone who I hurt. A lot. This is my… apology, I guess.”
And so he picks up his guitar and executes the one part of this plan he had, well, planned, and sings Maybe I’m Amazed to Rachel who still stands stage left.
But her face morphs from surprise to awe as she watches him sing. Her hand slowly moves from her mouth to her heart.
When he is finished and has stepped away from the microphone, it is only the cheers of the audience that make him tear his eyes away from Rachel.
He starts to make his way off stage, but he is blind-sided by Rachel running at him and throwing herself into his arms. He drops his guitar but catches her.
He knows that although they are not on center stage, that everyone can still see them, the glee club included.
“Did you mean it?” she asks and she sounds breathless.
“Yeah, I meant it.”
“That’s probably the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me, Noah.”
“I was afraid of that,” he smirks. “Cause I’m going to have to do something even better…”
She looks at him questioningly but before she can put it into words, his hands are in her hair and he’s tipping her back as he covers her mouth with his.
They hear the shocked gasps of their schoolmates in the background, but it does not deter them.
“The thing is, Rachel,” he begins to tell her once he tears his mouth from hers, “Damn, don’t you already know?”
But she looks at him with those big brown, innocent eyes like she has no clue.
(He knows she does).
“I love you, okay? I love you. And I’m just as freaking crazy as you are to do something like that - like this! So, there. I love you. Happy?”
“Very,” she sighs, wrapping her arms around his neck.
“Aren’t you going to say it back?”
She arches an eyebrow and looks at him with a gleam in her eye. “But don’t you already know?”
“Oy. I must be in love if I’m willing to put up with you.”
Mr. Schuester tries to salvage their assembly and ushers the rest of glee club on stage, making them push past the couple where they stand. And then he threatens Puck and Rachel to take their places as well.
“Hey, Noah?” Rachel whispers as they take their places on stage beside one another.
“Yeah?”
“Does this mean I’m your girlfriend?”
“Shut up, Rachel.”
He shoves her, but catches her before she can fall.
rating: r
disclaimer: i don't own glee. i imagine if i did it would take away the sting of failing out of school.
spoilers: up to 1.13 just to be safe.
pairings: rachel/puck
summary: a series of 4 interlocking drabbles about how puck and rachel's relationship changes.
author's note: this chapter was a tough one to write. puck and rachel are hard characters to crack. and writing for characters still in high school is tough for me, too, because apparently, i'm older than i thought.
Rachel has always loved the first day of school. The promise it brings. The hope of endless possibilities. The chance to start fresh. The opportunity to talk her dads into buying her a new wardrobe.
As Rachel walks down the halls of McKinley High on the first day of her junior year, with her new notebooks and her new plaid skirt, she doesn’t feel that same optimism she normally does.
She feels like a different girl than the one she was the last time she walked down these halls. Her summer with Puck has left her transformed.
It has left her older, wiser, sadder.
And she feels all of those things acutely when she catches sight of Puck. He is headed in her direction, surrounded by football player friends and trailed by giggling cheerleaders. He doesn’t even pause when he passes her.
That is how she knows whatever they had has come to an end.
---
An entire day passes without so much as glance from Puck, despite them sharing three classes together.
When the bell sounds, dismissing them from their final class, and Puck rushes to the door, slipping right past Rachel, she begins to believe she dreamt up their entire summer together. The warm, chlorinated water, the cool, murky water of the lake, the warmth of Puck’s tanned skin beneath her hands, the feel of his lips against hers. Rachel begins to chalk it up to another well-crafted fantasy of hers.
It’s either that, or Puck has just become another name on the long list of people who disappoint her. Despite his warning the night before that he would most assuredly let her down, it is still not an easy pill to swallow.
Which is why she chooses to believe the former because it’s easier for her heart to handle.
---
When glee assembles for their first official meeting of the school year, Rachel sits among her fellow glee clubbers and holds her breath until Puck walks in. When he catches her eye across the room, her heart drops and she knows she did not dream up their summer - it was all real.
It makes her heart hurt.
He takes the seat furthest from her and the pain is almost unbearable.
Mr. Schuester finally joins them and calls the meeting to order. He attempts to motivate them with talk of sectionals and regionals and even nationals. He talks of the changes he’d like to make to the club this year to make them even better than the last.
Mercedes mumbles (loudly) that it’d be a nice change if Rachel stopped acting like a diva and didn’t get every solo.
While Rachel’s first instinct is to ignore Mercedes and remain prim and proper and unaffected in her seat, Rachel can not do that. So, she turns in her chair, her eyes narrowing on Mercedes. “I’m sorry, Mercedes, if you have something to say to me, I’d appreciate it if you said it to my face.”
Mercedes looks shocked. As does the rest of the glee club. But she quickly recovers and says, “I said it would be nice if you didn’t get every solo.”
“I don’t believe that I do,” Rachel replies as curtly as possible. “I can think of numerous times last year that I didn’t get a solo. Or solos that were ripped away from me and given to one of you in the interest of fairness. Of course, it wasn’t fair to me. But, no one really cares about being fair to me, do they? Or being nice to me. Like you just demonstrated by saying something rude behind my back.”
“Rachel,” Mr. Schuester tries to cut in.
“No, Mr. Schuester, I think they should hear this.” She gets out of her seat and turns to face them. “I know that none of you like me. As hard as I’ve tried to be your friend, I realize that’s never going to happen as you all seem to harbor some unknown resentment towards me. I can live with that. But the least you can do is show some respect for your fellow teammate. Because as much as I love glee, I cant be here if you don’t respect me.”
“Is this where you storm out?” Kurt asks with a roll of his eyes.
“No. This is where I wait for you all to choose if you want me here.”
There is silence and Rachel feels her heart begin to drop.
“She stays,” Puck says gruffly. “No one here is as talented as she is.”
She meets his eyes and manages a grateful smile.
“I agree,” Tina says. “We need her if we have any chance of winning.”
The others agree as well. Mercedes, Kurt, and Santana are slower in relenting, but they finally do and the meeting continues without incident.
Rachel is shown more respect after that.
And if she didn’t know better, she’d even say they begin to become her friends.
---
After glee club disbands for the day and everyone has left, Puck makes his way to where Rachel is slowly packing up her belongings.
“Hey,” he greets her softly.
She looks up from her things, surprised to see him at her side. “Hey.”
“What you said today? To Mercedes? That was pretty fucking awesome.”
She smirks, ignoring his crass language, and simply says, “Thanks.”
“I guess you finally got pissed enough to tell someone off. It’s about time.”
“I guess I was just sick of giving people the right to treat me badly.” She picks up her bag and looks into his eyes. “And I’m tired of people always letting me down.”
He looks away.
“It was time to show people I’m not going to take it anymore. I deserve better than that. I learned that from a friend.”
He looks at her again and begins to smile.
“An old friend,” she adds before brushing past him.
His smile falls.
And if Puck thought he had a heart, that would be falling, too.
---
Puck quickly comes to the (somewhat-shocking) realization that he actually misses Rachel Berry.
It is hard to transition from her being a staple in his every day life to not having her at all. Days without Rachel are harder than he anticipated.
Of course, he misses the fun physical aspects of having Rachel in his day-to-day life. The way she would pounce on him if he sang her Sweet Caroline and the flick of her tongue would cause him to hit all the high notes. Or the way her breasts felt crushed beneath him when they went a little too far. And he misses her breathless humming when his lips moved over all the right spots along the column of her throat.
But he misses the rest of her, too. Her contagious laugh. Her ability to go on for hours about the most meaningless things in the world. And the way she can be perfectly silent and still when it means the most.
She is still present.
She’s in a couple of his classes (he’s not sure how many, he rarely goes) and she’s in glee with him in the afternoons. But she does not speak to him or even look at him.
For her part, she ignores him.
While at one point, Puck believed that everyone in the world was one more disappointment to Rachel, he begins to think it’s not even possible to disappoint her.
And Puck thinks that, really, he just let himself down by pissing away the one real friendship he ever had.
It’s a bitch.
---
In between classes one day, when Puck feels the absence of Rachel a little too intensely, he finds her in the hallway and strides over to where she stands at her locker.
“Hey. You got a sec?”
She looks up at him suspiciously.
He didn’t really have a purpose in mind, or a plan, which he now considers might have been a good idea because she’s staring up at him so expectantly like she actually wants him to say something.
“Did you need something?” she finally asks him because she cant be late for biology. Her punctuality is one trait she admires most about herself, naturally.
And because she really cant handle the way he’s looking down at her, causing her heart to beat in that hauntingly familiar rhythm.
Puck cant help but wince at how she annoyed she sounds with him. He opens his mouth to speak - to snap out some sarcastic comment to get back at her - but he cant seem to get the words out.
“You can borrow my history notes if you want. And English,” she tells him before she turns back to her locker.
“That’s not… I don’t give a damn about any of that crap.”
She continues to ignore him as he continues to stand beside her.
The silence continues to build and it makes him uncomfortable, especially considering the longest he’s ever been in Rachel’s company and she hasn’t said a word is, like, 30 seconds. And the only thing he can think to say, he blurts out, “I miss you.”
Rachel falters for just a moment. Her breath catches and her fingers curl into the door of her locker. She stands still for a long moment before she can look at him. And while her heart beats at a sickeningly fast rhythm that makes her want to simultaneously throw up and pass out, she says softly, “I cant. I just cant do this.”
She pushes her history and English notes into his hands before she closes her locker and turns to walk away from him.
“Rachel,” he calls after her.
She stops, turning her head slightly (but doesn’t quite meet his eyes), she tells him quietly, “It’s not suppose to hurt this much, remember?”
Puck thinks if he had a heart, it would be breaking.
The painful aching in his chest is just a coincidence.
---
When Puck sees Rachel laughing and smiling in the hallway with Brian Douglas, he believes that his initial reaction of wanting to punch Brian in his stupid face has to do with the fact that he hates Brian for calling him a sissy in the eighth grade and not a single thing to do with Rachel.
Even if she’s doing that stupid hair-flipping thing and touching Brian’s shoulder in an attempt to do something normal people call flirting. He’s not sure if Rachel’s version is similar to a normal teenager’s, but it seems to do the trick because Brian is practically drooling.
But Puck would not call what he feels jealousy. Not even when his hands curl into fists at his sides when he watches Brian watch Rachel bounce away.
Not even when he’s pushing Brian against the lockers and threatening him within an inch of his life if he so much as looks at Rachel, would Puck call what he feels jealously.
---
Puck’s first reaction is to act out. To retaliate against what he feels.
It is in his nature to grab the easiest and closest cheerleader and make her beg to be with him until Rachel Berry becomes a bad memory.
But when he takes Summer Phillips behind the bleachers during math, he cant get the taste of Rachel out of his mouth.
So, Puck stalks back to class and when he spots Rachel seated primly beside Brian Douglas, he decides to employ a new tactic.
Instead of taking his usual seat in the back corner, he plops himself down beside Rachel in the front row. She glances over at him nervously, but quickly returns her attention to Mrs. Cole.
All he can do is smile while he watches her fidget for the rest of the class.
---
“It’s not going to work, ya know,” Puck breathes into Rachel’s ear after math class one afternoon, after she refused his offer to partner on a project and turned to Brian instead.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she maintains.
“Trying to make me jealous with that pussy, Brian? It’s not going to work.”
Rachel shrugs. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“Right. Because always you go for dumb jocks just like him,” he drawls sarcastically.
She gives him a meaningful look and he’s quick to remember Finn.
“Whatever. Just know, that this little act of liking Brian to make me jealous is not going to work.”
“Okay,” she sings as she makes her way out of the classroom.
“It’s not going to work,” he grumbles to himself.
But it totally is.
---
When Kurt throws a bitch fit during rehearsal one afternoon about Rachel, Puck steps up to defend her a little too quickly. He even shoves him, but when Kurt falls too easily into the drums, he realizes he might have pushed a little too hard.
“Noah!” Rachel cries.
“What?” Puck demands. “He cant treat you like that. He cant talk that way to you and get away with it.”
He storms out of the choir room, fists clenched at his sides.
Rachel is torn between helping Finn pick Kurt up and running after Puck.
---
Rachel chooses Puck and finds him on the steps outside of school.
“Why do you keep doing things like that?”
“Like what?”
“Pushing Kurt around. Threatening Brian. Sticking up for me. We’re not friends, remember? Those are your terms, Noah, and I’m just trying to honor them. But if you insist on breaking the rules, then…”
“Then what?”
“Then I cant pretend this summer never happened.”
“What if I don’t want to pretend it never happened?” he asks. But his voice is so low that he almost hopes she doesn’t hear him.
But she does and she reminds him, “You do. Because this is who you need to be right now.”
She descends down the steps, but he catches her wrist when she goes past him and stops her.
“What if I want to be better?”
Rachel sighs and she manages to look down at him with a smile. Albeit the saddest one he’s ever seen. “Then you need to do that for yourself.” She pulls her arm away. “Please. Just don’t make this any harder than it already is.”
He lets her walk away.
---
Puck can easily mark the three hardest days of his life on the calendar.
The first being the day his father left his mother. The second being the day he and Quinn gave their daughter away. And the third is when Quinn comes to him with an update of how their daughter is doing with her new parents and leaves him with a fucking picture of a little girl that has his eyes.
It’s like rubbing salt in a wound.
A wound that only started to heal after Rachel weaved her way into his life and replaced the memories of that dark, hopeless day with bright, vibrant ones.
But now it’s open and he think he feels the pain just as intensely as he did the day he was forced to give her up.
The anger builds and the only way he knows how to release it is to punch and kick and throw everything that crosses his path.
He just happens to be in the choir room when Quinn delivers this information so the plastic chairs (which he already kinda hated before this) and the instruments receive a beating.
The crash of cymbals and the crushing of a guitar vibrate within his mind and the only thing that can break through the noise is his name being screamed out repeatedly.
With a saxophone (his next victim) in his hands, he turns to find Rachel standing horrified in the doorway.
“Noah,” she breathes as she carefully crosses the room to get to him.
When she is before him, she takes hold of his arm and coaxes him to lower the instrument to the ground. “Noah. What is it?”
He shows her the picture of the baby with his eyes.
She wraps herself around him, holding herself as hard as she can against him.
“It’s okay,” she whispers in his ear. “It’s going to be okay.”
Slowly, they sink to the ground among the broken pieces of his rampage. They cling to one another as they cry.
---
When Puck cant sleep, he finds himself at Rachel’s house in the middle of the night with his guitar.
He sings Just the Way You Are in her front yard, below her window, until she finally opens the door and stomps outside in her pajamas, her hands slung low on her hips and her eyes narrowed on him.
“My dads would like me to get rid of the cute hooligan before the neighbors call the cops,” she tells him.
“Did you like it?”
She rolls her eyes and sighs because the answer is so obvious to her. “Yes. Of course. It was beautiful.”
The stand across from one another in silence.
Rachel finally asks, “What are you doing here, Noah?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
Puck finally abandons his guitar and strides towards her. “Here’s the thing, Rachel. No one has been there for me like you have. After we had to give away the baby… it was you helped me get through all of that. This summer. And today. You were a good friend to me and I have been a dick to you. Because… god,” he actually growls in frustration, running his hands over his face.
“Noah,” she insists, pulling him back to her.
“The thing is… I know I’m an ass. I’m that way to most people. Some people stick around in spite of it. My mother, Finn… you. Most of them don’t, but that’s okay, because I deserve it. I treat people like shit until they cant take it anymore and I lose really good things - like Quinn and the baby. I probably don’t deserve to be a dad to that baby for throwing slushies in your face and throwing Kurt into that dumpster. Just like I don’t deserve you.”
“That’s what you think?” she asks him breathlessly. “That you don’t deserve me?”
He shrugs and keeps his eyes on the grass rather than looking at her. “Despite you being absolutely insane and annoying the crap out me most of the time, yeah.”
“You’re an idiot,” she laughs and it shocks him enough to look up at her. “If you think you don’t deserve good things, you’re never going to have them. And if you think you don’t deserve me, well… you’re wrong.”
“Rachel,” he sighs.
“Yes, you’re a jerk and you treat people badly sometimes. And you do things to keep people away. But, look at me, I lack tact and I ramble and I probably don’t express empathy very well. And I do things to keep people away.”
“So…”
“So… if you don’t deserve me then I don’t deserve you.”
He laughs nervously and rubs at the back of his head. “Come on, Rach…”
“What are you doing at my house in the middle of the night, Noah?” she asks again.
“Look, Rachel, I’m not good with the words or whatever. Not like you are. I don’t know very many big ones and I usually fuck up the small ones. I just know that I miss you. I miss the way things were between us this summer. And I just want us to go back to the way things were, when they were good. Can we please do that? I know it’s a lot to ask, especially because I royally fucked up, but…”
“You’re wrong,” she interjects. “Again.”
“What?” he breathes. He takes a step back. His heart begins to freefall in the direction of the grass beneath his feet.
“You’re actually really, really good with words.”
Puck has just enough time to see her smirk before she’s launching herself into his arms and her mouth is pressed firmly against his.
“Hey Rachel?” Puck asks, tearing his mouth from hers.
“Yeah?” She feels a little lightheaded and has to hold tight to his arms to keep herself from swaying.
“There was something else I wanted to tell you.”
She feels her heart hammer in her chest, so she grips his arms a little tighter.
“Cute pajamas.”
Rachel pushes him. Hard. He falls to the ground, but he’s laughing as he goes.
He pulls her down with him and they’re both laughing so hard that even when Rachel’s fathers turn on the sprinklers, all they can do is laugh even harder.
---
Puck is quick to realize (although it does not surprise him one little bit) that they key to getting Rachel to do anything is music.
So, when he suggests that they keep their relationship - whatever it is, they haven’t worked their way up to definitions just yet - on the down low, he convinces her by singing My Girl about fifty times.
When he tries to get her to make out with her in his truck instead of going to first period, he sings Wonderwall.
They spend the first two periods making out in his truck.
And when he’s trying to get her to ditch history and meet him in the janitor’s closet instead, only the promise of singing I’ll Be is enough to make her join him.
It’s not even a blow to his sexual prowess that the promise of singing over whatever sexual act he has in mind to perform on her is what entices her to do things. Because when his fingers are buried deep inside of her and she’s chanting his name breathlessly in his ear, he’s certain he’s the only thing on her mind. And not even sappy lyrics of a dumb love song can make her feel like he does when he flicks his fingers against that sensitive little bundle of nerves and his teeth scrap against her nipple.
But when her lips are wrapped tightly around his length, his hands buried in her hair, and he’s screaming her name (he sang her Sweet Caroline - her favorite - that afternoon) he’s pretty sure that he’s not in control of a single thing Rachel Berry does - pretty love songs or not.
Because when she looks up at him with those big brown eyes, innocent even when she’s on her knees before him, he thinks she’s the one with all the power.
He doesn’t mind.
Especially when her tongue swirls around his tip and he sees stars.
Gold ones.
---
They sneak around the halls of school, hiding from their classmates. They sneak around their homes, hiding from their parents.
It’s reminiscent of the summer they spent in their little bubble, just the two of them.
Sometimes it’s absolutely thrilling.
But sometimes it’s downright tiring.
---
They are discovered making out in the empty choir room one afternoon before glee.
As Rachel sits on the piano, wrapped around Puck, they hear a collective gasp from the doorway and a mingling of, “Oh!” “Oh my god!” and “My eyes, my eyes!”
At the sight of three of their fellow glee club members - Kurt, Mercedes, and Artie - Puck tears away from Rachel and puts at least ten steps between them.
“What’s going on with you guys?” Mercedes asks, looking between them,
“Nothing,” Puck tells them quickly, stalking over to the corner and picking up a guitar while ignoring their eyes on him.
“Yeah, nothing,” Rachel repeats as she slides down from the piano and straightens her skirt.
When she looks over at Puck and he refuses to meet her eyes, she resolves not to cry.
But when she hears him threatening Kurt, Mercedes, and Artie not to say a word to anyone, that resolution goes out the window.
---
Rachel does not speak to Puck for three days.
At one time he would consider that a reward, not a punishment. But now all he can think of is how miserable he is without her.
And when she’s not a part of his life, he reverts back to his old ways. He’s more apt to bully the underdogs, to throw slushies at unsuspecting freshman, and basically be an ass to anyone who gets in his way.
He’d almost admit he’s happier (and nicer) when Rachel’s a fixture in his life.
He’d also almost admit he’s happier when he has someone who will actually listen to him moan about the problems of his day or will make him laugh by saying the craziest stuff. Someone to waste away afternoons and evenings with.
He’d almost admit that stuff.
But he’s not really into sissy crap like that.
Even if he’d do just about anything to get it all back.
---
On the fourth day, the silence is too much and he storms after Rachel in the parking lot and catches her before she can slip into her car.
“Are you ever going to talk to me again?” he demands. He does so indignantly, like he has a right to be mad. He knows he doesn’t, but he’s hoping that maybe he can trick her into thinking he does.
“I don’t know, Noah. Are you ever going to be okay with being with me?”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“No? Because I was under the impression that you didn’t want anyone to know about our relationship, such as it is. And if you don’t want people to know we’re, well… whatever we are, then maybe we shouldn’t be together at all.”
“Is that really what you want?”
“No,” she admits in a whisper. “But I cant keep doing this. It hurts too much.”
“And it’s not suppose to hurt,” he says softly.
“I don’t know. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it is suppose to hurt. Maybe that’s all love is.”
He looks up at her in surprise and he means to tell her something, but she looks away, and he cant seem to remember what it is.
“Rachel,” he breathes. “I want to be with you.”
“Just not in front of everyone else,” she reminds him. “And that’s okay. I understand that you have a certain reputation you need to uphold at this school in order to survive. You need a certain defense, so you’ve adopted that bully, badass complex, and that means that you can never be with someone like me. Not seriously. And not in front of the entire school.”
“You think you know me so well,” he drawls and he means to tease her because she’s nailed him on the head, really, and he doesn’t want her to know.
But he’s knows Rachel’s not stupid.
“And you know, a romance with a high school bad boy isn’t really in my plan,” she quips as she falls easily into that guarded Rachel-Berry-thing she does so well. She’s that driven girl with no heart once again. “You’re only going to deter me from what I really want, so it’s best if we end things now.”
“You’re breaking up with me again?”
She steps around him and opens her car door. “Don’t worry,” she tells him as she slides into the car. “I wont tell.”
---
Puck decides the only way to get Rachel back is to take a page from her book.
He needs a plan.
A good one.
The only thing is, he’s more of a wing-it type of guy than a guy who makes plans.
So, he decides that his plan will involve music and that’s as far as he gets. Because plans aren’t really his thing.
He just hopes the rest comes to him when he’s before Rachel. And the rest of the school because that’s the only other part of his plan he figures out.
He’ll put it all into action during their performance for the entire school.
Sure, it’s sappy and cheesy and it’s been done about a thousand times in every stupid teenage chick flick Rachel’s ever forced him to watch.
But he thinks it’s just crazy enough to get her back.
---
Puck pleads his case to Mr. Schuester who allows him to put his plan into action during their assembly for the entire school.
While the other glee clubbers wait in the wings of the stage while Mr. Schuester is announcing them to those crammed inside the theatre, Puck picks up his guitar and walks onto center stage. He ignores the calls from his teammates that it’s not time yet.
Mr. Schue steps aside, letting Puck takes his place in the middle of the stage and looks out at the questioning (and rather unhappy) faces of his classmates, he think he should have had a better plan than this.
“Uh. This is for, um…” he starts uneasily, but he glances stage left and spies Rachel’s questioning face and the words come easier. “This is for someone who I hurt. A lot. This is my… apology, I guess.”
And so he picks up his guitar and executes the one part of this plan he had, well, planned, and sings Maybe I’m Amazed to Rachel who still stands stage left.
But her face morphs from surprise to awe as she watches him sing. Her hand slowly moves from her mouth to her heart.
When he is finished and has stepped away from the microphone, it is only the cheers of the audience that make him tear his eyes away from Rachel.
He starts to make his way off stage, but he is blind-sided by Rachel running at him and throwing herself into his arms. He drops his guitar but catches her.
He knows that although they are not on center stage, that everyone can still see them, the glee club included.
“Did you mean it?” she asks and she sounds breathless.
“Yeah, I meant it.”
“That’s probably the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me, Noah.”
“I was afraid of that,” he smirks. “Cause I’m going to have to do something even better…”
She looks at him questioningly but before she can put it into words, his hands are in her hair and he’s tipping her back as he covers her mouth with his.
They hear the shocked gasps of their schoolmates in the background, but it does not deter them.
“The thing is, Rachel,” he begins to tell her once he tears his mouth from hers, “Damn, don’t you already know?”
But she looks at him with those big brown, innocent eyes like she has no clue.
(He knows she does).
“I love you, okay? I love you. And I’m just as freaking crazy as you are to do something like that - like this! So, there. I love you. Happy?”
“Very,” she sighs, wrapping her arms around his neck.
“Aren’t you going to say it back?”
She arches an eyebrow and looks at him with a gleam in her eye. “But don’t you already know?”
“Oy. I must be in love if I’m willing to put up with you.”
Mr. Schuester tries to salvage their assembly and ushers the rest of glee club on stage, making them push past the couple where they stand. And then he threatens Puck and Rachel to take their places as well.
“Hey, Noah?” Rachel whispers as they take their places on stage beside one another.
“Yeah?”
“Does this mean I’m your girlfriend?”
“Shut up, Rachel.”
He shoves her, but catches her before she can fall.