That the Moon Elbowed the Stars 4/17
Title: That the Moon Elbowed the Stars
Chapter: 4/17
Rating: R
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Word Count: 4,900
Summary: And maybe it's an awful thing to think, but he wonders what's worse for her, losing New York or losing her dad.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Puck kind of loves Thanksgiving.
Being Jewish, all that Christmas spirit shit doesn't mean anything to him, and yeah, Hanukkah is the same time of year, but it's not even the most important Jewish holiday. (As far as he can figure, Christmas isn't actually the most important Christian holiday either, even if they celebrate it that way, so fuck it all.) Thanksgiving though: That's a holiday every gluttonous American can get behind, right?
Seriously though, his mom's an awesome cook, and she makes these pumpkin doughnut muffin things that she only makes for Thanksgiving that he looks forward to all year. There's a long weekend off from school, there's football, and even though their house will be full of cousins and shit all day Thursday, there's basically nothing bad about Thanksgiving.
He and Sam drive to Lima together on Tuesday night after they both get out of class. Sam's bringing a bunch of school stuff back so he can get ahead before finals, which is all well and good, and but Puck intends to do fuck all this weekend. Seriously, other than eating himself into a coma, he has no plans.
He hasn't been home since the semester started, so he hasn't seen his mom since August, and he isn't at all surprised that she meets him out on the front porch, pulling him into a hug so tight it literally hurts his ribs. She calls him every few days to check in, but he's never going to be the guy having long heart-to-hearts with his mom, on the phone or otherwise, and it's just different than living in the same house with her. Abby's got a totally new attitude since she's started middle school, making her act like she's completely indifferent to Puck being there at all, and whatever. He remembers what bitches all the girls were in middle school, and it's not at all a surprise that Abby's one of those bitches, too. Being a jerk is like, a Puckerman thing.
Besides, she ends up giving him a hug after dinner, right after she tells him that he looks stupid with the beard he's let grow out.
(His mom hates it, too, and screw 'em both. It's no-shave November. He'll shave next month.)
He's the last one awake in the house, because Abby still has school for half a day tomorrow and his mom has to work, and honestly, he's kind of digging being in his own room, alone and in his not-tiny bed. And yeah, having a dinner his mom cooked totally beats the stuff he eats in the dining hall every night at school. The house is quiet in a way that the dorms never are, and while he'd normally watch TV or listen to his iPod or whatever until he went to sleep, he ends up picking up some book Rachel left in his room over the summer (or lent to him to read, whatever), reading until his eyes start to close, and just enjoying the quiet.
*
"We need to talk."
Rachel knew things were off the second she walked into the house, so she isn't terribly surprised to hear Daddy say those words during dinner. She sets her fork down slowly and folds her hands in her lap, pretending that she can't feel Dad's intent gaze on her face from beside her. "All right."
"I got the results from my appointment on Friday," Andrew begins, letting out a little sigh. "They found something, so I went in this morning, for more tests, and they--"
"Please just tell me," Rachel interrupts. She doesn't need all the details, not right now. Later, yes, she'll need to know everything, but right now, she just needs him to get to the point.
He presses his lips together and looks at her for just a moment before speaking. "It's back and it's likely terminal."
She swallows hard and reminds herself to breathe. "How long?"
"Rachel," her dad begins.
"How long?" she repeats more firmly, looking straight at her daddy.
"Three to six months."
The desire to bolt is there immediately, and she wonders, sort of vaguely, when she became the girl who wants to run away. She's always been more the type to put herself in to the middle of stressful situations, not avoid them, but this, with her father, is somehow different. She promised her dad that she wouldn't do that again, wouldn't leave without letting them know that she was okay (though she can't imagine how she's supposed to be okay when she's getting news like this, that her daddy is dying, this time with some measure of certainty), and that's not a promise that she wants to break.
"Okay," she says after a long moment. She looks down at the pasta on her plate. It looks completely unappetizing, but she doesn't want her daddy to be worrying about her when he should be concentrating on his own health. That's why she picks up her fork again, spears a bite, and chews it carefully.
Her composure lasts exactly three bites before she sets her fork down again and looks across the table at her daddy. "What happens now?" She's not sure she really wants to answer, but she has to ask.
Andrew sighs, dropping his fork onto the table and pushing his plate back. "Palliative chemo."
"Palliative," she repeats. Palliative care is meant to make patients comfortable when there isn't anything else to be done. She hates how much of this jargon she knows, this terrible language of cancer. She imagines the next few months will be full of terms like palliative and metastatic and quality of life. "So you're just giving up?"
He shakes his head a little. "There isn't anything else to do, sweetheart. Because of where it's spread."
"I don't understand," she whispers. "A month ago, you were fine."
He shrugs his shoulders helplessly, and that just sums it all up, doesn't it?
She wakes early the next morning to help prepare dinner. Apparently cancer isn't a good enough reason to cancel a holiday meal, so she busies herself with rolling pie crust and slicing apples while her fathers work on the rest of the meal. Truthfully, she wants to be alone, but they celebrate Thanksgiving with her dad's family every year, and this year is their turn to host.
Rachel loves her family, she really does. The two sides sometimes feel incredibly distinct: They look different, obviously, have different religious backgrounds and beliefs, and just generally behave in very different ways, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't love them both. She appreciates her Jewish nana's meddlesome gossiping just as much as her grandfather telling her every time he sees her that she needs to 'get some meat on her bones.' She has aunts and uncles and cousins on both sides, and while her nuclear family makes her - them, the three of them - the black sheep, it's one of the places in the world that she always feels like she belongs. And that's precisely what family is supposed to be: unconditional love and acceptance.
Just like every year, Rachel ends up explaining her rationale for her veganism to Aunt Donna and discussing her (lack of) love life with her nana. (Rachel was the first grandchild, and Nana has been talking about getting great-grandchildren since Rachel was about eleven; it's such a cliché that it's become somehow endearing.) Her uncle and a couple of her cousins are watching football in the basement, while everyone else seems to have congregated in the kitchen to make food preparation as difficult as possible for those involved. It's a completely normal holiday.
Except for the wet blanket of her father's illness that's been thrown over the whole thing.
Things are quieter than they would usually be, more subdued. For her own part, Rachel is lying about enjoying Columbus and OSU, playing along with everyone else who's pretending that she isn't heartbroken by the fact that she isn't in New York because her daddy is dying. They're all speaking so carefully, avoiding references to simple things like Daddy's accounting job or anything further in the future than Christmas.
And god, Christmas is going to be a nightmare. Daddy was raised Christian and never officially converted to Judaism, so they celebrate the holiday with his family every year. That's part of the reason that Dad's family always gets Thanksgiving celebrations. They'll spend the day in Cleveland and she's absolutely certain that the funereal feeling of today is going to be infinitely worse with her daddy's family around.
She still doesn't have much of an appetite, but she makes herself a plate and eats the food that she doesn't really taste, ignoring Aunt Donna's worried gaze. (Honestly, the woman is ridiculous. Just because Rachel isn't eating turkey and macaroni and cheese doesn't mean that she's malnourished.) Nana, bless her, seems to be the only person at the table mindful and capable enough to keep a normal conversation moving, and the way she's sitting at the head of the table opposite Dad makes it feel like she's holding court. She gets Clayton talking about basketball season coming up, asks Rachel about finals, and even brings up the insurance debates going on in the media despite the fact that insurance seems to be on the list of taboo topics when there's a terminal cancer patient sitting at the table.
Truly, Rachel has never loved her nana more.
Everyone else, however, is making her crazy, so she retreats to the kitchen to start putting leftovers into storage containers and rinsing dishes while the rest of the family sits in the dining room with coffee and dessert. It's simply overwhelming, feeling like she needs to play hostess to her extended family when she hasn't even had a chance to process her own thoughts on what's going on.
(She's stopped thinking about Daddy's illness in terms of her feelings; it's been months since she really felt anything about it.)
She's arranging the last of the dinner plates in the dishwasher when she hears steps on the tile floor, and honestly, if she hears the word protein again from her aunt's mouth, she's going to scream. She's relieved when it's Nana who steps up beside her and reaches for the coffee pot.
She watches Rachel gather flatware from the sink and arrange it in the dishwasher, sipping her coffee thoughtfully. "How are you, Rachel?"
She looks at her grandmother strangely, closing the dishwasher and straightening up. "Fine."
"Rachel." The woman shakes her head and sets her coffee cup down, takes a step closer. "How are you?"
She's already tired of having these conversations again. It's only been a day and she hasn't told any of her friends about her father's condition, and she's already exhausted by the concerned looks and the carefully worded questions.
Rachel considers the question for a moment, then shrugs. "I don't know."
"Having everybody here must be hard."
She isn't quite sure if she loves or hates her nana for the knowing look in her eyes.
"You should sneak out of here," Nana says, obviously serious under her casual tone. "Go spend time with some of your friends, see a movie."
"Nana--"
"Don't argue with me." Her tone brooks no nonsense, then she's slipping her hand inside the collar of her blouse, producing a twice-folded twenty dollar bill (the one she keeps tucked beneath her bra strap habitually), and pressing it into Rachel's palm. "I'll make your excuses. Get out of here."
Rachel lets out a little breath, then pulls her grandmother into a hug. "Thank you, Nana."
"Bubbala," Nana murmurs against her hair. "You're going to be okay." Rachel nods, blinking rapidly against the sting in her eyes. "Go."
She slips upstairs quickly to grab her things, and she actually manages to get out the front door and into her car without being caught. Part of her wonders exactly what excuses Nana is going to make, but she's mostly just glad to be out of the house.
She doesn't really think about where she's going until she's out of the driveway and turning off her street, but Nana's movie suggestion seems as good as anything else. There's a little theater downtown, one of those places with a single screen and balcony seating that shows only classic films, and honestly, she'd rather watch something in black and white than sit through two hours of the latest insipid romantic comedy.
It feels like a gift just for her when she sees Roman Holiday on the marquee.
She's just ten minutes late for the latest showing, so she buys her ticket and slips into the darkened theater, choosing a seat on the opposite side of the room from the couple whose empty theater experience she's ruining, sitting closer to the screen than they are so she isn't distracted by whatever they may choose to do over there. (Really, with friends like Puck and Santana, inappropriate thoughts like that shouldn't surprise her any more.)
She loses herself in the movie, swept away by the vision of Audrey Hepburn as a European princess and Gregory Peck as her handsome American. It's escapism at its best: in black and white, with an impossibly charming leading man and and an unspeakably beautiful woman, falling in love for just a moment. Rachel sits in the dark, her scarf still wound around her neck and her feet propped up on the back of the seat in front of her, and lets herself wish for a man like Gregory Peck.
Doing this was exactly what she needed, and when the lights come up after the film ends, Rachel thinks, not for the first time, that grandmothers are always right.
She checks her phone on her way back to her car and finds a text message from Daddy. Your aunt is still here. I'd stay out late if I were you.
It makes her smile, because her clashes with Aunt Donna have never exactly gone unnoticed. The less time the two of them spend together, the better.
She considers her options while she sits with her car running in the parking lot, but frankly, there aren't very many thing to do in Lima at eight o'clock on a holiday evening, and after a few minutes, she's tapping out a quick text to Noah.
She's got her hands hidden in the pockets of her pink wool coat when Puck opens the door, a candy-striped looking scarf wound around her neck and her hair pulled back away from her face.
He was kind of surprised when she texted him. He'd always figured she'd be all about the family time stuff, but she mentioned something about an overbearing aunt and asked if he minded having some company. His own family has only been gone for a couple of hours - the house was a fucking zoo all day - but he doesn't mind if Rachel comes and hangs out.
"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" she asks, unbuttoning her coat when she's standing inside the front door. Her eyes are lowered just a little, like she's afraid that he's going to tell her to go away. That's pretty stupid, considering that he told her to come over when she texted him.
"Nope." He takes her coat and drapes it over the staircase railing next to his. His mom hates that shit, but he's been doing it forever, so he's not sure why she ever bothers to say anything any more.
The house is warm, from cooking and having people in it all day, Rachel assumes, and smells like coffee and cinnamon. She can hear his mom's voice in the kitchen when he starts leading her up the stairs.
She isn't completely sure what she intends to do now that she's here. The only reason she's here at all is because she didn't want to go home and didn't really have anywhere else to do. Sam is the only other one of her friends she knows for sure is town today, and she doesn't really feel comfortable imposing herself on his family during the holidays. Somehow, it's different with Noah. (And no, she can't explain it.)
"Is your family as fucking annoying as mine?" he asks, closing the door and flopping down on the bed.
"Probably not," she answers honestly, biting her lip a little when he raises his eyebrows. "It's just...one of those days, I guess."
She shrugs her shoulders, perching on the edge of his desk chair.
She looks sort of weird, like there's something she's not saying. But, fuck, the girl isn't the open book she used to be, isn't laying it all out there like she did when they were in high school, before all the stuff with her dad, and that's fine. If she wants to tell him shit, okay. If not, whatever.
He watches her for a minute, trying to figure out what the hell's going on with her. When he can't figure it out, he asks, "Wanna get drunk?" She blinks at him. "There're a bunch of bottles of wine downstairs. My mom'll never notice if we snag one."
Rachel thinks that sounds sort of wonderful.
"Okay."
"Every girl should get to have a man like Gregory Peck," she insists, gesturing at him with her fork. "It's a damn shame that it's so hard to find one."
They killed a bottle of red in less than an hour, and since they split it pretty evenly, Rachel's drunk and Puck's just feeling good. And that's kind of the best way to be around her when she drinks, because the girl's hilarious, and being just a little drunk yourself makes her even funnier. Now she's sitting on his bedroom floor eating fruit crisp made with pears and plums because she refuses to eat anything sitting on his bed, where he's still sitting.
(And he's like, ninety-eight percent sure the crumbly part on top of that crisp was made with butter, but she didn't ask and he's sure as fuck not going to volunteer the recipe and make her stop eating it when she's obviously enjoying it the way she is.)
"Who the fuck is Gregory Peck?"
She rolls her eyes dramatically, scooping another little bite onto her fork. "He's the male lead the movie I saw earlier."
"About the princess who doesn't want to be a princess."
"Right." She chews her bite thoughtfully. "He's Atticus Finch."
Jesus, this girl is random. And fuck, Puck isn't even drunk. It's not like he's missing shit. "What?"
"Do you remember watching To Kill a Mockingbird freshman year?"
No. "Sure."
She rolls her eyes. "Gregory Peck plays Atticus Finch. The dad." She huffs out a breath when he doesn't really react, but damn. This whole line of conversation doesn't really apply to him anyhow; what the hell good is talking about the perfect man?
"Hepburn was one of those classy chicks," he offers, sliding down onto the floor next to her. He snags the fork from her hand and steals a bite from her plate.
Rachel hands him the rest of her dessert to finish and stretches her legs out in front of her. Thinking about Gregory Peck's perfection got her thinking about the boys she's had in her life (Finn, Jesse, Noah, to a certain extent) and just how long it's been since she's had that sort of attention. Almost exactly six months, which is just sad, really. Romance has been the last thing on her mind, and while it's nice on one hand (her love life has been the second-most important thing in her world for the past three years, after all, just behind her music, and so stressful), it's just not fair that it's been six months since she's even been kissed.
"How's your daddy doing?" Noah asks around a mouthful of crisp. It's become one of the standard questions she gets when she talks to her friends, and it will never cease to amuse her to hear the word 'daddy' coming from their mouths, Noah's in particular. And actually, the question has come later tonight than it normally would, given that she's been her for over an hour.
"Not well, actually," she answers after a moment. Puck reaches up behind him to set the plate on his desk, because this doesn't sound like the kind of conversation you have while you eat dessert. "The cancer is back," she says softly. "Or it was never gone." She shrugs one shoulder and shakes her head a little. "It's bad."
It's completely ridiculous, she thinks, that she keeps showing up here and dropping these bombshells on Noah, but it isn't like she plans it. Honestly, she doesn't want to talk about it at all right now, and she wasn't going to bring it up. God, that was the whole point of leaving her house earlier. But he asked, and she doesn't want to lie.
"That sucks," he says, because really, what the hell else is he supposed to say? It does suck, and if the tiny little smiles she gives him is anything to go on, she agrees.
And fuck, just like the last time she sat in his room and told him her dad was dying (what a fucking tradition they've got going here), he doesn't know what to say. Is there a 'right' thing to say to someone when she tells you one of her parents is dying?
At a loss, he finally says, "Wanna open another bottle and get wasted?"
"Oh, my god," she laughs. "I really, really do."
*
Rachel wakes up on Friday morning in Noah's bed, fully dressed, with a splitting headache and a terrible taste in her mouth, and drinking most of a bottle of wine on her own now strikes her as a really awful idea in a way that she neglected to consider before she did it last night. She manages to get herself out of his bed, then tears the back off an envelope she finds on his desk, scrawls a quick note, and leaves him there asleep when she slips out of his bedroom.
Her intention is to creep out the house unnoticed, but Rachel can hear Noah's mother moving around in the kitchen when she's tiptoeing down the stairs, and it's just rude to leave without saying anything.
Marlene smiles at her when she appears in the kitchen doorway. "Well, you're up bright and early for a wino."
She grimaces. "I'm sorry." Rachel can't decide what, exactly, she should apologize for: drinking in the woman's house, playing along when Noah started pilfering bottles of wine from the kitchen, spending the night in his bed without having permission.
Marlene waves her hand as she takes a sip of coffee from the red mug in her hand. "Did you have a good Thanksgiving?"
Rachel manages a little smile with her nod, but then Marlene has this knowing look on her face. "My dad's cancer..." she trails off helplessly. "He's really dying this time."
Marlene sets her mug down with a sigh. "Oh, honey."
"Unless something miraculous happens, I just had my last Thanksgiving with my daddy," she says, realizing it for the first time, eyes wide as she looks at the sympathetic expression on Noah's mother's face. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"Rachel, there isn't anything you're supposed to do," Marlene says gently. "Except probably not drinking to excess when you're underage."
Rachel actually smiles a little when she nods.
"Rachel..." Marlene pauses, takes a drink of her coffee like she needs a moment to decide exactly what she wants to say. "If you ever feel like you need to talk, find someone to listen. A friend or your dad or a counselor at school. Hell, call me," she adds with a little grin. "Don't hold it all in, what you're feeling."
Rachel thinks better of mentioning that she doesn't feel much of anything about all of this, about her father, and hasn't really from the beginning. Instead, she just says, "I will. I promise," she adds at Marlene's pointed look.
Noah's mother nods, then holds up a finger, turns to the refrigerator, and pulls out a rather large bottle of red Gatorade. "Drink this," she advises, handing the bottle to Rachel. "And take two Advil."
"Thank you, Mrs. Puckerman."
She waves her hand. "Call me Marlene."
*
Puck meets this girl in a computer lab on campus the week before finals. He's in the lab working on his sociology paper because Sam has actually parked his ass in their room to study for his Spanish final, and he's working through fucking Rosetta Stone or something on his computer, looking at pictures of cats and mispronouncing the word gato and whatever the hell else. (For his part, Puck took two years of Spanish with Schue and spent four years fucking Santana; he knows some shit, which makes listening to Sam pretty painful.) Plus, part of his tuition pays for computers and paper and whatever, so he might as well take advantage of it.
He has his notes and whatever spread out to the right of his keyboard, referring to the stuff while he types and making notes with his pen, and it's actually not a bad system. Until this chick sits at the workstation next to his and starts arranging her own stuff (a yellow three-ring binder and a huge text he recognizes as a literature anthology) to the left of her own keyboard, right up next to his.
He's just about to open his mouth and say something about the fact that she's crowding him when she reaches over to underline a bit of text in her book with her left hand, and he bites his tongue.
Puck has a theory about left-handed girls: He's pretty sure they're all freaks, secretly or not-so-secretly.
Admittedly, most of his theory is based on his knowledge of one Santana Lopez, the first girl he ever fucked, the girl he's spent the most time doing filthy things with. But there was also Nikki Roberts, who was really into taking it in the back door (she surprised the fuck out of Puck when she brought it up), and Mrs. Garcia, a cougar from his pool cleaning days who kept handcuffs in her bedside table drawer and liked to wear them.
The girl sitting next to him has chin-length red hair and creamy skin, and her fingernails are painted a red so dark it's nearly black. The sleeves of her gray sweatshirt are pushed up to her elbows, and she alternates between typing really fucking fast - quoting things from her text, if the direction of her gaze is any indication - and going more slowly, pausing every few seconds, like she's thinking about what she wants to say.
And she's distracting the fuck out of him.
It really is an accident when he knocks her pencil off the edge of the table with his notebook. He's just trying to get his shit together so he can head back to his room and find something to eat. He leans over to grab the pencil before she gets a chance, smiles when she takes it with a 'thank you.' "I'm Puck."
She quirks an eyebrow at him. "I'm busy."
Bitch. But now that he's really looking at her, he sees these huge brown eyes, and he's pretty sure that only good things are going on underneath that sweatshirt. He just nods, snagging the pen from behind his ear and flicking through the pages in her notebook until he finds a blank one, ignoring the way she's glaring at him. He scrawls his cell number, then offers her a wink while he caps the pen. "Later."
He stands up, shoulders his bag, and walks away before she can say anything.
Chapter: 4/17
Rating: R
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Word Count: 4,900
Summary: And maybe it's an awful thing to think, but he wonders what's worse for her, losing New York or losing her dad.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Puck kind of loves Thanksgiving.
Being Jewish, all that Christmas spirit shit doesn't mean anything to him, and yeah, Hanukkah is the same time of year, but it's not even the most important Jewish holiday. (As far as he can figure, Christmas isn't actually the most important Christian holiday either, even if they celebrate it that way, so fuck it all.) Thanksgiving though: That's a holiday every gluttonous American can get behind, right?
Seriously though, his mom's an awesome cook, and she makes these pumpkin doughnut muffin things that she only makes for Thanksgiving that he looks forward to all year. There's a long weekend off from school, there's football, and even though their house will be full of cousins and shit all day Thursday, there's basically nothing bad about Thanksgiving.
He and Sam drive to Lima together on Tuesday night after they both get out of class. Sam's bringing a bunch of school stuff back so he can get ahead before finals, which is all well and good, and but Puck intends to do fuck all this weekend. Seriously, other than eating himself into a coma, he has no plans.
He hasn't been home since the semester started, so he hasn't seen his mom since August, and he isn't at all surprised that she meets him out on the front porch, pulling him into a hug so tight it literally hurts his ribs. She calls him every few days to check in, but he's never going to be the guy having long heart-to-hearts with his mom, on the phone or otherwise, and it's just different than living in the same house with her. Abby's got a totally new attitude since she's started middle school, making her act like she's completely indifferent to Puck being there at all, and whatever. He remembers what bitches all the girls were in middle school, and it's not at all a surprise that Abby's one of those bitches, too. Being a jerk is like, a Puckerman thing.
Besides, she ends up giving him a hug after dinner, right after she tells him that he looks stupid with the beard he's let grow out.
(His mom hates it, too, and screw 'em both. It's no-shave November. He'll shave next month.)
He's the last one awake in the house, because Abby still has school for half a day tomorrow and his mom has to work, and honestly, he's kind of digging being in his own room, alone and in his not-tiny bed. And yeah, having a dinner his mom cooked totally beats the stuff he eats in the dining hall every night at school. The house is quiet in a way that the dorms never are, and while he'd normally watch TV or listen to his iPod or whatever until he went to sleep, he ends up picking up some book Rachel left in his room over the summer (or lent to him to read, whatever), reading until his eyes start to close, and just enjoying the quiet.
*
"We need to talk."
Rachel knew things were off the second she walked into the house, so she isn't terribly surprised to hear Daddy say those words during dinner. She sets her fork down slowly and folds her hands in her lap, pretending that she can't feel Dad's intent gaze on her face from beside her. "All right."
"I got the results from my appointment on Friday," Andrew begins, letting out a little sigh. "They found something, so I went in this morning, for more tests, and they--"
"Please just tell me," Rachel interrupts. She doesn't need all the details, not right now. Later, yes, she'll need to know everything, but right now, she just needs him to get to the point.
He presses his lips together and looks at her for just a moment before speaking. "It's back and it's likely terminal."
She swallows hard and reminds herself to breathe. "How long?"
"Rachel," her dad begins.
"How long?" she repeats more firmly, looking straight at her daddy.
"Three to six months."
The desire to bolt is there immediately, and she wonders, sort of vaguely, when she became the girl who wants to run away. She's always been more the type to put herself in to the middle of stressful situations, not avoid them, but this, with her father, is somehow different. She promised her dad that she wouldn't do that again, wouldn't leave without letting them know that she was okay (though she can't imagine how she's supposed to be okay when she's getting news like this, that her daddy is dying, this time with some measure of certainty), and that's not a promise that she wants to break.
"Okay," she says after a long moment. She looks down at the pasta on her plate. It looks completely unappetizing, but she doesn't want her daddy to be worrying about her when he should be concentrating on his own health. That's why she picks up her fork again, spears a bite, and chews it carefully.
Her composure lasts exactly three bites before she sets her fork down again and looks across the table at her daddy. "What happens now?" She's not sure she really wants to answer, but she has to ask.
Andrew sighs, dropping his fork onto the table and pushing his plate back. "Palliative chemo."
"Palliative," she repeats. Palliative care is meant to make patients comfortable when there isn't anything else to be done. She hates how much of this jargon she knows, this terrible language of cancer. She imagines the next few months will be full of terms like palliative and metastatic and quality of life. "So you're just giving up?"
He shakes his head a little. "There isn't anything else to do, sweetheart. Because of where it's spread."
"I don't understand," she whispers. "A month ago, you were fine."
He shrugs his shoulders helplessly, and that just sums it all up, doesn't it?
She wakes early the next morning to help prepare dinner. Apparently cancer isn't a good enough reason to cancel a holiday meal, so she busies herself with rolling pie crust and slicing apples while her fathers work on the rest of the meal. Truthfully, she wants to be alone, but they celebrate Thanksgiving with her dad's family every year, and this year is their turn to host.
Rachel loves her family, she really does. The two sides sometimes feel incredibly distinct: They look different, obviously, have different religious backgrounds and beliefs, and just generally behave in very different ways, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't love them both. She appreciates her Jewish nana's meddlesome gossiping just as much as her grandfather telling her every time he sees her that she needs to 'get some meat on her bones.' She has aunts and uncles and cousins on both sides, and while her nuclear family makes her - them, the three of them - the black sheep, it's one of the places in the world that she always feels like she belongs. And that's precisely what family is supposed to be: unconditional love and acceptance.
Just like every year, Rachel ends up explaining her rationale for her veganism to Aunt Donna and discussing her (lack of) love life with her nana. (Rachel was the first grandchild, and Nana has been talking about getting great-grandchildren since Rachel was about eleven; it's such a cliché that it's become somehow endearing.) Her uncle and a couple of her cousins are watching football in the basement, while everyone else seems to have congregated in the kitchen to make food preparation as difficult as possible for those involved. It's a completely normal holiday.
Except for the wet blanket of her father's illness that's been thrown over the whole thing.
Things are quieter than they would usually be, more subdued. For her own part, Rachel is lying about enjoying Columbus and OSU, playing along with everyone else who's pretending that she isn't heartbroken by the fact that she isn't in New York because her daddy is dying. They're all speaking so carefully, avoiding references to simple things like Daddy's accounting job or anything further in the future than Christmas.
And god, Christmas is going to be a nightmare. Daddy was raised Christian and never officially converted to Judaism, so they celebrate the holiday with his family every year. That's part of the reason that Dad's family always gets Thanksgiving celebrations. They'll spend the day in Cleveland and she's absolutely certain that the funereal feeling of today is going to be infinitely worse with her daddy's family around.
She still doesn't have much of an appetite, but she makes herself a plate and eats the food that she doesn't really taste, ignoring Aunt Donna's worried gaze. (Honestly, the woman is ridiculous. Just because Rachel isn't eating turkey and macaroni and cheese doesn't mean that she's malnourished.) Nana, bless her, seems to be the only person at the table mindful and capable enough to keep a normal conversation moving, and the way she's sitting at the head of the table opposite Dad makes it feel like she's holding court. She gets Clayton talking about basketball season coming up, asks Rachel about finals, and even brings up the insurance debates going on in the media despite the fact that insurance seems to be on the list of taboo topics when there's a terminal cancer patient sitting at the table.
Truly, Rachel has never loved her nana more.
Everyone else, however, is making her crazy, so she retreats to the kitchen to start putting leftovers into storage containers and rinsing dishes while the rest of the family sits in the dining room with coffee and dessert. It's simply overwhelming, feeling like she needs to play hostess to her extended family when she hasn't even had a chance to process her own thoughts on what's going on.
(She's stopped thinking about Daddy's illness in terms of her feelings; it's been months since she really felt anything about it.)
She's arranging the last of the dinner plates in the dishwasher when she hears steps on the tile floor, and honestly, if she hears the word protein again from her aunt's mouth, she's going to scream. She's relieved when it's Nana who steps up beside her and reaches for the coffee pot.
She watches Rachel gather flatware from the sink and arrange it in the dishwasher, sipping her coffee thoughtfully. "How are you, Rachel?"
She looks at her grandmother strangely, closing the dishwasher and straightening up. "Fine."
"Rachel." The woman shakes her head and sets her coffee cup down, takes a step closer. "How are you?"
She's already tired of having these conversations again. It's only been a day and she hasn't told any of her friends about her father's condition, and she's already exhausted by the concerned looks and the carefully worded questions.
Rachel considers the question for a moment, then shrugs. "I don't know."
"Having everybody here must be hard."
She isn't quite sure if she loves or hates her nana for the knowing look in her eyes.
"You should sneak out of here," Nana says, obviously serious under her casual tone. "Go spend time with some of your friends, see a movie."
"Nana--"
"Don't argue with me." Her tone brooks no nonsense, then she's slipping her hand inside the collar of her blouse, producing a twice-folded twenty dollar bill (the one she keeps tucked beneath her bra strap habitually), and pressing it into Rachel's palm. "I'll make your excuses. Get out of here."
Rachel lets out a little breath, then pulls her grandmother into a hug. "Thank you, Nana."
"Bubbala," Nana murmurs against her hair. "You're going to be okay." Rachel nods, blinking rapidly against the sting in her eyes. "Go."
She slips upstairs quickly to grab her things, and she actually manages to get out the front door and into her car without being caught. Part of her wonders exactly what excuses Nana is going to make, but she's mostly just glad to be out of the house.
She doesn't really think about where she's going until she's out of the driveway and turning off her street, but Nana's movie suggestion seems as good as anything else. There's a little theater downtown, one of those places with a single screen and balcony seating that shows only classic films, and honestly, she'd rather watch something in black and white than sit through two hours of the latest insipid romantic comedy.
It feels like a gift just for her when she sees Roman Holiday on the marquee.
She's just ten minutes late for the latest showing, so she buys her ticket and slips into the darkened theater, choosing a seat on the opposite side of the room from the couple whose empty theater experience she's ruining, sitting closer to the screen than they are so she isn't distracted by whatever they may choose to do over there. (Really, with friends like Puck and Santana, inappropriate thoughts like that shouldn't surprise her any more.)
She loses herself in the movie, swept away by the vision of Audrey Hepburn as a European princess and Gregory Peck as her handsome American. It's escapism at its best: in black and white, with an impossibly charming leading man and and an unspeakably beautiful woman, falling in love for just a moment. Rachel sits in the dark, her scarf still wound around her neck and her feet propped up on the back of the seat in front of her, and lets herself wish for a man like Gregory Peck.
Doing this was exactly what she needed, and when the lights come up after the film ends, Rachel thinks, not for the first time, that grandmothers are always right.
She checks her phone on her way back to her car and finds a text message from Daddy. Your aunt is still here. I'd stay out late if I were you.
It makes her smile, because her clashes with Aunt Donna have never exactly gone unnoticed. The less time the two of them spend together, the better.
She considers her options while she sits with her car running in the parking lot, but frankly, there aren't very many thing to do in Lima at eight o'clock on a holiday evening, and after a few minutes, she's tapping out a quick text to Noah.
She's got her hands hidden in the pockets of her pink wool coat when Puck opens the door, a candy-striped looking scarf wound around her neck and her hair pulled back away from her face.
He was kind of surprised when she texted him. He'd always figured she'd be all about the family time stuff, but she mentioned something about an overbearing aunt and asked if he minded having some company. His own family has only been gone for a couple of hours - the house was a fucking zoo all day - but he doesn't mind if Rachel comes and hangs out.
"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" she asks, unbuttoning her coat when she's standing inside the front door. Her eyes are lowered just a little, like she's afraid that he's going to tell her to go away. That's pretty stupid, considering that he told her to come over when she texted him.
"Nope." He takes her coat and drapes it over the staircase railing next to his. His mom hates that shit, but he's been doing it forever, so he's not sure why she ever bothers to say anything any more.
The house is warm, from cooking and having people in it all day, Rachel assumes, and smells like coffee and cinnamon. She can hear his mom's voice in the kitchen when he starts leading her up the stairs.
She isn't completely sure what she intends to do now that she's here. The only reason she's here at all is because she didn't want to go home and didn't really have anywhere else to do. Sam is the only other one of her friends she knows for sure is town today, and she doesn't really feel comfortable imposing herself on his family during the holidays. Somehow, it's different with Noah. (And no, she can't explain it.)
"Is your family as fucking annoying as mine?" he asks, closing the door and flopping down on the bed.
"Probably not," she answers honestly, biting her lip a little when he raises his eyebrows. "It's just...one of those days, I guess."
She shrugs her shoulders, perching on the edge of his desk chair.
She looks sort of weird, like there's something she's not saying. But, fuck, the girl isn't the open book she used to be, isn't laying it all out there like she did when they were in high school, before all the stuff with her dad, and that's fine. If she wants to tell him shit, okay. If not, whatever.
He watches her for a minute, trying to figure out what the hell's going on with her. When he can't figure it out, he asks, "Wanna get drunk?" She blinks at him. "There're a bunch of bottles of wine downstairs. My mom'll never notice if we snag one."
Rachel thinks that sounds sort of wonderful.
"Okay."
"Every girl should get to have a man like Gregory Peck," she insists, gesturing at him with her fork. "It's a damn shame that it's so hard to find one."
They killed a bottle of red in less than an hour, and since they split it pretty evenly, Rachel's drunk and Puck's just feeling good. And that's kind of the best way to be around her when she drinks, because the girl's hilarious, and being just a little drunk yourself makes her even funnier. Now she's sitting on his bedroom floor eating fruit crisp made with pears and plums because she refuses to eat anything sitting on his bed, where he's still sitting.
(And he's like, ninety-eight percent sure the crumbly part on top of that crisp was made with butter, but she didn't ask and he's sure as fuck not going to volunteer the recipe and make her stop eating it when she's obviously enjoying it the way she is.)
"Who the fuck is Gregory Peck?"
She rolls her eyes dramatically, scooping another little bite onto her fork. "He's the male lead the movie I saw earlier."
"About the princess who doesn't want to be a princess."
"Right." She chews her bite thoughtfully. "He's Atticus Finch."
Jesus, this girl is random. And fuck, Puck isn't even drunk. It's not like he's missing shit. "What?"
"Do you remember watching To Kill a Mockingbird freshman year?"
No. "Sure."
She rolls her eyes. "Gregory Peck plays Atticus Finch. The dad." She huffs out a breath when he doesn't really react, but damn. This whole line of conversation doesn't really apply to him anyhow; what the hell good is talking about the perfect man?
"Hepburn was one of those classy chicks," he offers, sliding down onto the floor next to her. He snags the fork from her hand and steals a bite from her plate.
Rachel hands him the rest of her dessert to finish and stretches her legs out in front of her. Thinking about Gregory Peck's perfection got her thinking about the boys she's had in her life (Finn, Jesse, Noah, to a certain extent) and just how long it's been since she's had that sort of attention. Almost exactly six months, which is just sad, really. Romance has been the last thing on her mind, and while it's nice on one hand (her love life has been the second-most important thing in her world for the past three years, after all, just behind her music, and so stressful), it's just not fair that it's been six months since she's even been kissed.
"How's your daddy doing?" Noah asks around a mouthful of crisp. It's become one of the standard questions she gets when she talks to her friends, and it will never cease to amuse her to hear the word 'daddy' coming from their mouths, Noah's in particular. And actually, the question has come later tonight than it normally would, given that she's been her for over an hour.
"Not well, actually," she answers after a moment. Puck reaches up behind him to set the plate on his desk, because this doesn't sound like the kind of conversation you have while you eat dessert. "The cancer is back," she says softly. "Or it was never gone." She shrugs one shoulder and shakes her head a little. "It's bad."
It's completely ridiculous, she thinks, that she keeps showing up here and dropping these bombshells on Noah, but it isn't like she plans it. Honestly, she doesn't want to talk about it at all right now, and she wasn't going to bring it up. God, that was the whole point of leaving her house earlier. But he asked, and she doesn't want to lie.
"That sucks," he says, because really, what the hell else is he supposed to say? It does suck, and if the tiny little smiles she gives him is anything to go on, she agrees.
And fuck, just like the last time she sat in his room and told him her dad was dying (what a fucking tradition they've got going here), he doesn't know what to say. Is there a 'right' thing to say to someone when she tells you one of her parents is dying?
At a loss, he finally says, "Wanna open another bottle and get wasted?"
"Oh, my god," she laughs. "I really, really do."
*
Rachel wakes up on Friday morning in Noah's bed, fully dressed, with a splitting headache and a terrible taste in her mouth, and drinking most of a bottle of wine on her own now strikes her as a really awful idea in a way that she neglected to consider before she did it last night. She manages to get herself out of his bed, then tears the back off an envelope she finds on his desk, scrawls a quick note, and leaves him there asleep when she slips out of his bedroom.
Her intention is to creep out the house unnoticed, but Rachel can hear Noah's mother moving around in the kitchen when she's tiptoeing down the stairs, and it's just rude to leave without saying anything.
Marlene smiles at her when she appears in the kitchen doorway. "Well, you're up bright and early for a wino."
She grimaces. "I'm sorry." Rachel can't decide what, exactly, she should apologize for: drinking in the woman's house, playing along when Noah started pilfering bottles of wine from the kitchen, spending the night in his bed without having permission.
Marlene waves her hand as she takes a sip of coffee from the red mug in her hand. "Did you have a good Thanksgiving?"
Rachel manages a little smile with her nod, but then Marlene has this knowing look on her face. "My dad's cancer..." she trails off helplessly. "He's really dying this time."
Marlene sets her mug down with a sigh. "Oh, honey."
"Unless something miraculous happens, I just had my last Thanksgiving with my daddy," she says, realizing it for the first time, eyes wide as she looks at the sympathetic expression on Noah's mother's face. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"Rachel, there isn't anything you're supposed to do," Marlene says gently. "Except probably not drinking to excess when you're underage."
Rachel actually smiles a little when she nods.
"Rachel..." Marlene pauses, takes a drink of her coffee like she needs a moment to decide exactly what she wants to say. "If you ever feel like you need to talk, find someone to listen. A friend or your dad or a counselor at school. Hell, call me," she adds with a little grin. "Don't hold it all in, what you're feeling."
Rachel thinks better of mentioning that she doesn't feel much of anything about all of this, about her father, and hasn't really from the beginning. Instead, she just says, "I will. I promise," she adds at Marlene's pointed look.
Noah's mother nods, then holds up a finger, turns to the refrigerator, and pulls out a rather large bottle of red Gatorade. "Drink this," she advises, handing the bottle to Rachel. "And take two Advil."
"Thank you, Mrs. Puckerman."
She waves her hand. "Call me Marlene."
*
Puck meets this girl in a computer lab on campus the week before finals. He's in the lab working on his sociology paper because Sam has actually parked his ass in their room to study for his Spanish final, and he's working through fucking Rosetta Stone or something on his computer, looking at pictures of cats and mispronouncing the word gato and whatever the hell else. (For his part, Puck took two years of Spanish with Schue and spent four years fucking Santana; he knows some shit, which makes listening to Sam pretty painful.) Plus, part of his tuition pays for computers and paper and whatever, so he might as well take advantage of it.
He has his notes and whatever spread out to the right of his keyboard, referring to the stuff while he types and making notes with his pen, and it's actually not a bad system. Until this chick sits at the workstation next to his and starts arranging her own stuff (a yellow three-ring binder and a huge text he recognizes as a literature anthology) to the left of her own keyboard, right up next to his.
He's just about to open his mouth and say something about the fact that she's crowding him when she reaches over to underline a bit of text in her book with her left hand, and he bites his tongue.
Puck has a theory about left-handed girls: He's pretty sure they're all freaks, secretly or not-so-secretly.
Admittedly, most of his theory is based on his knowledge of one Santana Lopez, the first girl he ever fucked, the girl he's spent the most time doing filthy things with. But there was also Nikki Roberts, who was really into taking it in the back door (she surprised the fuck out of Puck when she brought it up), and Mrs. Garcia, a cougar from his pool cleaning days who kept handcuffs in her bedside table drawer and liked to wear them.
The girl sitting next to him has chin-length red hair and creamy skin, and her fingernails are painted a red so dark it's nearly black. The sleeves of her gray sweatshirt are pushed up to her elbows, and she alternates between typing really fucking fast - quoting things from her text, if the direction of her gaze is any indication - and going more slowly, pausing every few seconds, like she's thinking about what she wants to say.
And she's distracting the fuck out of him.
It really is an accident when he knocks her pencil off the edge of the table with his notebook. He's just trying to get his shit together so he can head back to his room and find something to eat. He leans over to grab the pencil before she gets a chance, smiles when she takes it with a 'thank you.' "I'm Puck."
She quirks an eyebrow at him. "I'm busy."
Bitch. But now that he's really looking at her, he sees these huge brown eyes, and he's pretty sure that only good things are going on underneath that sweatshirt. He just nods, snagging the pen from behind his ear and flicking through the pages in her notebook until he finds a blank one, ignoring the way she's glaring at him. He scrawls his cell number, then offers her a wink while he caps the pen. "Later."
He stands up, shoulders his bag, and walks away before she can say anything.