And So It Seemed To Confess 2/5
Title: And So It Seemed To Confess
Chapter: 2/5
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Word Count: 4,400
Summary: AU He isn't worried about Rachel talking about him being in therapy at school. Nope, Puck's worried that Rachel might tell her dad what Puck used to do and Dr. Berry will get him sent back to juvie.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
So when Puck starts thinking about how to approach this thing with Rachel, he realizes something kind of important.
He doesn't know how to become friends with a girl. He knows how to flirt with chicks and like, seduce them, but he hasn't ever had a girl be just his friend. Santana's the closest thing, and they've been fucking off and on for a couple of years, so she probably doesn't count.
The last girl that Puck had to work to get with was Quinn, but he doesn't want to think about her even a little bit. The only other girl that he's ever had to make any real effort with was Santana, back when he first decided that he wanted to get under her skirt. It was the summer before freshman year, and she claimed to hate him, even though they ended up making out at every other party and their conversations were more innuendo than anything else. The night she finally agreed to let him put it in, they were at a party and he brought her a drink, vanilla rum with Sprite instead of Coke because he remembered that she likes cream soda.
Puck doesn't know a lot about Rachel. He knows that she can sing. He heard that, back before the show choir thing fell apart. He can, too, a little, and he plays guitar, but there isn't really a way to use that to his advantage with a girl who's already decided he's an asshole. He knows what classes she's taking, and he knows that she likes wearing short skirts. (He likes that, too.)
He wracks his brain all night for any information he might have about her, but all he comes up with is a series of mental images of her with slushies dripping off her face and down over her chest.
*
He legitimately can't remember the last time that he got a slushie, but he stops at the 7-11 before school and buys a big gulp. It costs more than they used to, but if this works, it'll be worth the three bucks.
Going without a lid is a habit, but he gets a straw from the guy behind the register and tucks his behind his ear. Driving with one hand on the wheel and the other holding the drink is an old, familiar motion, and even though his hand is freezing by the time he gets to school, he doesn't spill the thing. It's a good thing, too, since he's got his mom's car for the day. She has something going on at work and won't be able to get away until after dinner, but she still wasn't willing to give him back the keys to his truck, making him drop her off at her office first. Crazy woman.
Rachel is just closing her locker when he rounds the corner, and when she sees him walking towards her with the cup in his hand, she squeezes her eyes shut tight and presses her lips together. Seeing her brace herself like that - he's pretty sure she's holding her breath, too - makes him feel like a pretty colossal asshole.
"I picked it up for you when I was buying dip," he lies. He doesn't chew any more, but he doesn't need her to know that he stopped just to get her a slushie either. "It's grape," he goes on when she just blinks at him. He reaches up to retrieve the straw from behind his ear. "I know that's your favorite, because the last time I tossed a grape one in your face, you licked your lips before you cleaned yourself off." That's one of those mental images that he conjured up when he was trying to figure out how to like, befriend her. This is all he could come up with.
She takes the cup and straw from him, though he can tell that it's more automatic than deliberate, the result of him holding something out right in front of her. This is the first time that he's acknowledged what he used to do to her. He's not sure if her lack of a reaction is good or bad.
"I'm seriously going to bomb that history test next week, and I can't afford to fail," he says when she just keeps standing there blinking at him. That isn't a lie. "Will you please help me?"
He watches her swallow and look at the drink in her hand. "Is this supposed to be some sort of peace offering?"
"Yes." He must not sound totally sure of himself, because she gives him a reproachful look. "I'm trying, okay? I don't know how to do this."
She softens a little, shifting her weight and glancing at the cup again. "I suppose you are making some sort of effort."
"So you'll help me?"
A little rush of triumph goes through him when she nods her head.
*
"My brain feels like it's going to melt," Puck complains. "Can we take a break?"
Okay, so the studying thing was mostly just an excuse to get Rachel alone, though he definitely wasn't going to do that well on this test. After just an hour of reviewing with her, he thinks he's probably going to get his best test score in years. The girl is thorough.
Rachel smiles, setting her pen on top of her notebook. "Okay."
There hasn't been a girl in Puck's house since Quinn had the baby and moved back in with her mom back at the beginning of summer. Generally, Puck would rather spend his time at the girl's place instead of having her at his for a whole bunch of different reasons, but he can't exactly hang out with Rachel at her house and risk having her dad figure this shit out.
So he made a point of cleaning up his room before she came over, making sure that his guitar case is standing in the corner where she might notice it and putting all of his dirty laundry in the hamper instead of just near it.
Puck closes his history book and sets it aside. "You wanna make out?"
Rachel raises an eyebrow. "Does that really work with girls?"
"Sometimes," he answers honestly, though he knows what it looks like when he gets shot down. Damn shame, too. She looks fucking hot today, wearing this tiny black skirt and a red sweater with a bow on it, and he wants to touch her hair to feel if it's as soft as it looks. Having her underneath him could be awesome.
"I thought you were dating Santana Lopez anyhow."
"Nah." What he and Santana do together hasn't been 'dating' in over a year. They're great together in bed, but they suck at being in a relationship together. Hell, maybe they both just suck at being in relationships period. "We're just friends."
"Is it true that you were sent to juvie for crashing your mother's car into the front of a convenience store in Akron?"
Even though it comes out of nowhere, he can't help laughing at the way that she blurts out the question. "No. I tried to steal an ATM with my mom's car."
"That's better," she deadpans. She tilts her head at him when he laughs again "Why did you do that?"
Fuck if he knows. (Lots of reasons, and no reasons at all, if he's being completely honest. Which he isn't.) "Million dollar question, baby. When I figure it out, I'll let you know." No, he won't. But whatever.
"Did it have something to do with Quinn Fabray?"
"Fuck, you're nosy."
"I'm sorry," she says quickly, moving so she's sitting on her knees on his bed. "I don't always think before I speak. It isn't any of my business, and I shouldn't have asked."
It's funny, he thinks, that her dad has been not asking that question ever since Puck started going to therapy, and after just a couple of hours alone, Rachel blurts it out.
"'S'okay," he mumbles. They sit in silence for a few moments, Rachel staring at her notebook and him watching her. "Are you sure you don't want to make out?" he asks after a while, just to cut through the tension.
And you know what? Rachel is really pretty when she laughs.
*
He snags one of the fries off Santana's plate when he sits next to her in the cafeteria after he's finished his own lunch, and the way she glares at him would be scary if he didn't know her so well.
"Take another one and I will break your fucking finger, Fairy."
Yeah, legit his least-favorite nickname in all of history. Fuck Shakespeare and whoever decided that high school students hundreds of years later need to read his plays. They're whack.
He ignores her and licks the salt from his fingers. "'S'with the fries, Lo?" She usually only breaks the Cheerio diet for booze or post-sex cheeseburgers.
"I'm having a bad day," she answers, and it's a skill, the way she makes even that sound condescending.
"What's your damage?"
"Britt started dating the new guy. They're like Barbie and Ken and it makes me nauseous."
He makes a noise that doesn't mean anything. Puck's seen Brittany hanging out with the new kid, Sam. Puck knows him a little bit from football, and he seems like a cool dude. Britt's definitely a sweetheart (and a hot piece, he knows; he's tapped that), but he isn't touching the Brittany and Santana shit with a ten-foot pole. Puck's seen what happens to people who try to come between those girls, and he isn't interested in having anything to do with them. He's pretty sure Sam doesn't know what he's getting into. He almost feels bad for the guy.
"Did I actually see you talking to Rachel Berry this morning?" Santana asks around a mouthful of french fry.
"She tutored me for my history test."
"She's fucking annoying." Puck rolls his eyes. Trying to have a conversation with Santana when she's got her bitch face on is a waste of time. He only came over here because she was basically by herself (there are other Cheerios at the table, but Santana's ignoring them), but now he wishes he hadn't. "I'm serious. She never shuts her fucking mouth."
Puck smirks. "She's kinda hot." Santana makes a face. "Seriously. Have you seen the legs on that chick?"
"All I see when I look at her is her blabbermouth."
He doesn't know where this urge to defend Rachel is coming from, but it's not worth bickering with Santana over, so Puck just shrugs and stands up, snagging another fry from her plate and darting away from the table before she can make good on her threat to break his bones.
*
He goes looking for Rachel after he gets his history test back. It's almost insultingly easy to find someone when you have her class schedule tucked in your wallet for quick reference, but it's definitely a time-saver. He catches her coming out of her chemistry class and falls into step beside her.
"Hey."
Her eyes are wide when she looks up at him. "Hi." He doesn't miss the way that she glances around, like she's looking to see if anyone is paying attention. It doesn't really matter if they are.
"I got my history test back," he tells her. "I got an eighty-nine."
"That's great!" she exclaims. She stops in front of her locker, but instead of putting in her combo, she turns to face him. "I'm proud of you."
It's like, weirdly sincere, these words coming from this girl. Honestly, they barely know each other, but the way that she says it. I'm proud of you. He can tell that she really means it.
His mom was the last person to say she was proud of him, after he'd signed away his rights to his kid. She'd said that she was proud of him for doing what was best for her. He'd kind of hated it then.
"Thanks," he mumbles to Rachel. "I'm pretty sure it's because you helped me."
She flashes him a really pretty smile. "Well, I am a good tutor." She turns to her locker and starts putting in the combo. "I'd be happy to help you study for the next exam as well, if you think you still need the assistance."
"Yeah?"
She glances up at him from beneath her eyelashes. "Sure. Studying with you was actually kind of fun."
He grins. She's not wrong, though it would have been more fun if she'd let him kiss her. Studying is as good an excuse as any to keep hanging out with her, so he agrees.
He stops at 7-11 the next morning, gets a grape slushie big gulp, and swings by Rachel's locker on his way to his first class. "This time it's a thank you," he tells her before she can say anything.
"I--"
"Later, Rach," he interrupts, winking at her before walking down the hallway.
*
"How's school going, Noah?" Dr. Berry asks.
Puck shrugs his shoulders. "Fine. We just had a grade check, and everything is a C or above." Actually, the only thing he has a C in is geometry, and that's because he missed all the stuff about proofs, and that shit's ridiculous. It's kind of weird, because other than studying for that history test with Rachel, Puck hasn't been working that much harder at school. He'll never admit it aloud, but it probably has something to do with the fact that he's actually going to class and half-paying attention to his homework instead of blowing it all off the way he was at the beginning of the year.
"That's an improvement, isn't it?"
"I did better last year," he admits, though he regrets it the second the words come out of his mouth.
"Were classes easier last year?" Dr. Berry asks.
"The only thing that's ever been hard for me is math," Puck says instead of answering the question, hoping that he'll drop the subject.
"What was different about last year then?"
He should have known Dr. Berry wasn't just going to drop it.
"I guess I had something to prove."
Dr. Berry's voice is quiet when he asks, "To whom?"
Quinn. "Everyone."
Dr. Berry nods, scribbling something on his notepad. "What was different about this year?"
Everything. Puck shrugs his shoulders instead of answering. He's done with this line of conversation.
"You've mentioned that sometimes people see you differently than you are," Dr. Berry begins, setting down his pen. "Do you think they might start to see you differently if you did well in school? More accurately, maybe?"
"No," Puck answers honestly.
"Why not?" Dr. Berry asks, his head tilted slightly to the left.
"It didn't work last time I tried, so why would it work now?"
It didn't matter what Puck did, Quinn was determined to give up their baby. He got a part-time job, he pulled his grades up, and he was even faithful to her. He was a better boyfriend to Quinn than he ever was to anyone else, and she made it pretty clear that she hated him for the whole situation the entire time they were together. And the second that they signed those papers, their relationship was over, such as it was to begin with. She legit acts like nothing ever happened.
Dr. Berry is watching Puck as closely as he ever has. "Who did you want to see you differently last year?"
"No one important."
That's the truth now, even if it wasn't then.
*
Rachel seems a lot more relaxed the second time that she comes to the house to help Puck study. She's wearing this dark blue dress with little flowers on it with red tights, which is actually sort of cute, and her hair is falling around her face in curls that are messy from the wind outside. It's sexy, really, and the fact that she's sitting on his bed with her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle while she leans back against his headboard to quiz him about Tudor England?
She's making focusing on the facts really difficult.
"You seem distracted," she says when he names Elizabeth as one of Henry VIII's wives, tilting her head at him.
"Wasn't Elizabeth his third wife?" Puck asks. He can't figure out how knowing any of this will ever be useful, but now that he's actually trying to learn the shit, it's annoying to get it wrong. But she's wearing this gold necklace with a little charm resting against her chest that he can't quite make out from where he's sitting, which is what he was paying attention to when she went over that crazy mnemonic device. Yeah, he's distracted.
"Jane Seymour was his third wife," she corrects gently. "Elizabeth was his daughter with Anne Boleyn, who was his second wife. She went on to become Elizabeth I, one of England's most well-known monarchs."
Puck rolls his eyes. "Even I think six wives is fucking ridiculous."
Her eyebrows come together a little. "Sorry," he mumbles. He figured that she's not really a fan of the cursing, so he's tried not to do it too much. That one slipped.
"You're frustrated," she says with a little shrug of her shoulders. "We can take a break."
Puck nods and stretches his arms over his head, arching his back. He's sitting in his desk chair, turned to face the bed, with his notebook balanced in his lap.
"You know, they did a television show about Henry VIII and his relationships a few years ago," Rachel says thoughtfully. "I'm sure it's rife with historical inaccuracies, but I've heard good things about its entertainment value."
"Hmm." He's distracted, again, by her necklace. "What is that?" he asks, moving forward so he's sitting on the bed beside her.
"What--what's what?" she stutters out nervously.
He brushes the tips of his fingers over her skin just beneath where the charm rest. "An XO," he murmurs, answering his own question. He watches her throat when she swallows. "Pretty."
"Thank you," she whispers. Her eyes are wide when he looks up at them. He's closer to her than he's ever been before, close enough that he can hear her shallow little breaths and see the lighter flecks of brown in her eyes. "Noah."
He can't remember ever hearing her say his name before, and something about the way his first name sounds when she whispers it makes him close the tiny bit of space between them, brushing his lips over hers. Her lips are so soft, and parted just slightly, so he does it again, but she pulls back before he can kiss her for real.
"What are you doing?" she asks.
"Do you want me to stop?" he asks instead of answering the question because it's pretty obvious that he's kissing her. He watches her eyes, sees the way that she looks at his mouth. He lets the pads of his fingers graze across her skin until they're just above her collarbone. "Rachel."
She kisses him instead of answering
He can tell right away that this isn't something that she's done a lot of. It isn't bad - it couldn't be, not when her lips are this soft and she makes these tiny little noises in the back of her throat - but some of her motions are unsure, like she doesn't know what to do next or where to put her hands. It's hot though, the way her fingers dig into his bicep when she opens her mouth under his, and the little whimper she lets out when his tongue brushes against hers for the first time.
The look on her face when he lays back and pulls her on top of him, her legs straddling his hips and her hair falling in a curtain around their faces, is enough to make his cock twitch. She blinks at him with big, wide eyes. "I don't--"
"Shh." He slips his hand into her hair - which is exactly as soft as it looks - and pulls her down gently until she's resting her hands against the pillow on either side of his head and kissing him again, a low sound coming from the back of her throat when he sucks lightly at her lower lip.
"We should be studying," she mumbles later, the words coming out between kisses. Puck doesn't agree, so he doesn't say anything, focusing his attention on trying to do whatever it was with his tongue that made her gasp and grind her hips down against his earlier. "Noah."
He groans instead of swearing like he'd like, because seriously? His name in her voice sounds fucking stellar.
She pushes herself away from him abruptly, sitting up straight and moving so she's kneeling next to him instead of being on top of him. "We have to stop," she insists.
"Is something wrong?"
"We need to study," she says instead of answering.
"Rachel." He watches her reach for her notebook, trying to discreetly smooth her hair. "Why are you freaking out?"
"I know all about your reputation," she says quietly, looking him straight in the eye. "I'm not that kind of girl."
"I know that," he tells her seriously. It's the truth. Rachel isn't like any other girl he's ever spent any time with. "And you know, not everything people say about me is true. Most of it, sure, but not all of it."
She smiles a little. "I know. I mean, I can already tell," she explains when he furrows his brow. "I think there's a very sweet guy hiding somewhere inside of you."
It's the kind of thing he'd normally scoff at, but the way that Rachel says it - like she really believes it - makes his stomach tighten a little, but not uncomfortably.
He leans over the edge of the bed to grab his notebook off the floor. "So this Henry guy married three chicks named Katherine, right?"
*
Puck had been worried, after Rachel left on Saturday, that she might think that making out meant more than just making out. She put her number in his phone and sent him a cute little text message (Studying was fun! xo) after she left, and he immediately went into panic mode.
He didn't really mean to make out with Rachel. It just happened, and even though it was awesome and he totally wouldn't mind if it happened again, it doesn't mean that he wants to be someone's boyfriend. Girls like Rachel take things too far, too fast, and he'd been afraid that a little tongue wrestling would make her think that they were a thing.
He saw her crossing the parking lot at school on Monday morning, walking beside Artie, who Puck knows from geometry, and all she did was smile at him before ducking her head so she could hear whatever it was that Artie was saying to her.
So he knows that what happened with Rachel means more to her than it would to someone like Santana, but she isn't going all Swimfan on him either, which is good. The point of getting to know her is so she won't hate him any more, and if she thinks that he broke her heart or whatever, she's definitely going to hate him.
Okay, so making out with Rachel was probably a bad idea.
Puck has poor impulse control. He has since he was a little kid with a bad habit of pushing kids down on the playground when they pissed him off. But after all of the stuff that happened last year, he's gotten better, with the exception of the ATM incident. What he's learned is that he just has to have a good reason not to do whatever it is that he wants to do. Letting Carrie DiMarco go down on him at a party or throwing a punch at Azimio for talking shit was just going to prove to Quinn that Puck wasn't good enough to be the father of her kid. Now, getting written up at school or fucking up this thing he's trying to get going with Rachel is going to land his ass back in juvie.
That means that he needs to make sure that he keeps things light with Rachel. He can't have her getting some crazy crush on him and crying to her dad about this guy who broke her heart.
Chapter: 2/5
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Word Count: 4,400
Summary: AU He isn't worried about Rachel talking about him being in therapy at school. Nope, Puck's worried that Rachel might tell her dad what Puck used to do and Dr. Berry will get him sent back to juvie.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
So when Puck starts thinking about how to approach this thing with Rachel, he realizes something kind of important.
He doesn't know how to become friends with a girl. He knows how to flirt with chicks and like, seduce them, but he hasn't ever had a girl be just his friend. Santana's the closest thing, and they've been fucking off and on for a couple of years, so she probably doesn't count.
The last girl that Puck had to work to get with was Quinn, but he doesn't want to think about her even a little bit. The only other girl that he's ever had to make any real effort with was Santana, back when he first decided that he wanted to get under her skirt. It was the summer before freshman year, and she claimed to hate him, even though they ended up making out at every other party and their conversations were more innuendo than anything else. The night she finally agreed to let him put it in, they were at a party and he brought her a drink, vanilla rum with Sprite instead of Coke because he remembered that she likes cream soda.
Puck doesn't know a lot about Rachel. He knows that she can sing. He heard that, back before the show choir thing fell apart. He can, too, a little, and he plays guitar, but there isn't really a way to use that to his advantage with a girl who's already decided he's an asshole. He knows what classes she's taking, and he knows that she likes wearing short skirts. (He likes that, too.)
He wracks his brain all night for any information he might have about her, but all he comes up with is a series of mental images of her with slushies dripping off her face and down over her chest.
*
He legitimately can't remember the last time that he got a slushie, but he stops at the 7-11 before school and buys a big gulp. It costs more than they used to, but if this works, it'll be worth the three bucks.
Going without a lid is a habit, but he gets a straw from the guy behind the register and tucks his behind his ear. Driving with one hand on the wheel and the other holding the drink is an old, familiar motion, and even though his hand is freezing by the time he gets to school, he doesn't spill the thing. It's a good thing, too, since he's got his mom's car for the day. She has something going on at work and won't be able to get away until after dinner, but she still wasn't willing to give him back the keys to his truck, making him drop her off at her office first. Crazy woman.
Rachel is just closing her locker when he rounds the corner, and when she sees him walking towards her with the cup in his hand, she squeezes her eyes shut tight and presses her lips together. Seeing her brace herself like that - he's pretty sure she's holding her breath, too - makes him feel like a pretty colossal asshole.
"I picked it up for you when I was buying dip," he lies. He doesn't chew any more, but he doesn't need her to know that he stopped just to get her a slushie either. "It's grape," he goes on when she just blinks at him. He reaches up to retrieve the straw from behind his ear. "I know that's your favorite, because the last time I tossed a grape one in your face, you licked your lips before you cleaned yourself off." That's one of those mental images that he conjured up when he was trying to figure out how to like, befriend her. This is all he could come up with.
She takes the cup and straw from him, though he can tell that it's more automatic than deliberate, the result of him holding something out right in front of her. This is the first time that he's acknowledged what he used to do to her. He's not sure if her lack of a reaction is good or bad.
"I'm seriously going to bomb that history test next week, and I can't afford to fail," he says when she just keeps standing there blinking at him. That isn't a lie. "Will you please help me?"
He watches her swallow and look at the drink in her hand. "Is this supposed to be some sort of peace offering?"
"Yes." He must not sound totally sure of himself, because she gives him a reproachful look. "I'm trying, okay? I don't know how to do this."
She softens a little, shifting her weight and glancing at the cup again. "I suppose you are making some sort of effort."
"So you'll help me?"
A little rush of triumph goes through him when she nods her head.
*
"My brain feels like it's going to melt," Puck complains. "Can we take a break?"
Okay, so the studying thing was mostly just an excuse to get Rachel alone, though he definitely wasn't going to do that well on this test. After just an hour of reviewing with her, he thinks he's probably going to get his best test score in years. The girl is thorough.
Rachel smiles, setting her pen on top of her notebook. "Okay."
There hasn't been a girl in Puck's house since Quinn had the baby and moved back in with her mom back at the beginning of summer. Generally, Puck would rather spend his time at the girl's place instead of having her at his for a whole bunch of different reasons, but he can't exactly hang out with Rachel at her house and risk having her dad figure this shit out.
So he made a point of cleaning up his room before she came over, making sure that his guitar case is standing in the corner where she might notice it and putting all of his dirty laundry in the hamper instead of just near it.
Puck closes his history book and sets it aside. "You wanna make out?"
Rachel raises an eyebrow. "Does that really work with girls?"
"Sometimes," he answers honestly, though he knows what it looks like when he gets shot down. Damn shame, too. She looks fucking hot today, wearing this tiny black skirt and a red sweater with a bow on it, and he wants to touch her hair to feel if it's as soft as it looks. Having her underneath him could be awesome.
"I thought you were dating Santana Lopez anyhow."
"Nah." What he and Santana do together hasn't been 'dating' in over a year. They're great together in bed, but they suck at being in a relationship together. Hell, maybe they both just suck at being in relationships period. "We're just friends."
"Is it true that you were sent to juvie for crashing your mother's car into the front of a convenience store in Akron?"
Even though it comes out of nowhere, he can't help laughing at the way that she blurts out the question. "No. I tried to steal an ATM with my mom's car."
"That's better," she deadpans. She tilts her head at him when he laughs again "Why did you do that?"
Fuck if he knows. (Lots of reasons, and no reasons at all, if he's being completely honest. Which he isn't.) "Million dollar question, baby. When I figure it out, I'll let you know." No, he won't. But whatever.
"Did it have something to do with Quinn Fabray?"
"Fuck, you're nosy."
"I'm sorry," she says quickly, moving so she's sitting on her knees on his bed. "I don't always think before I speak. It isn't any of my business, and I shouldn't have asked."
It's funny, he thinks, that her dad has been not asking that question ever since Puck started going to therapy, and after just a couple of hours alone, Rachel blurts it out.
"'S'okay," he mumbles. They sit in silence for a few moments, Rachel staring at her notebook and him watching her. "Are you sure you don't want to make out?" he asks after a while, just to cut through the tension.
And you know what? Rachel is really pretty when she laughs.
*
He snags one of the fries off Santana's plate when he sits next to her in the cafeteria after he's finished his own lunch, and the way she glares at him would be scary if he didn't know her so well.
"Take another one and I will break your fucking finger, Fairy."
Yeah, legit his least-favorite nickname in all of history. Fuck Shakespeare and whoever decided that high school students hundreds of years later need to read his plays. They're whack.
He ignores her and licks the salt from his fingers. "'S'with the fries, Lo?" She usually only breaks the Cheerio diet for booze or post-sex cheeseburgers.
"I'm having a bad day," she answers, and it's a skill, the way she makes even that sound condescending.
"What's your damage?"
"Britt started dating the new guy. They're like Barbie and Ken and it makes me nauseous."
He makes a noise that doesn't mean anything. Puck's seen Brittany hanging out with the new kid, Sam. Puck knows him a little bit from football, and he seems like a cool dude. Britt's definitely a sweetheart (and a hot piece, he knows; he's tapped that), but he isn't touching the Brittany and Santana shit with a ten-foot pole. Puck's seen what happens to people who try to come between those girls, and he isn't interested in having anything to do with them. He's pretty sure Sam doesn't know what he's getting into. He almost feels bad for the guy.
"Did I actually see you talking to Rachel Berry this morning?" Santana asks around a mouthful of french fry.
"She tutored me for my history test."
"She's fucking annoying." Puck rolls his eyes. Trying to have a conversation with Santana when she's got her bitch face on is a waste of time. He only came over here because she was basically by herself (there are other Cheerios at the table, but Santana's ignoring them), but now he wishes he hadn't. "I'm serious. She never shuts her fucking mouth."
Puck smirks. "She's kinda hot." Santana makes a face. "Seriously. Have you seen the legs on that chick?"
"All I see when I look at her is her blabbermouth."
He doesn't know where this urge to defend Rachel is coming from, but it's not worth bickering with Santana over, so Puck just shrugs and stands up, snagging another fry from her plate and darting away from the table before she can make good on her threat to break his bones.
*
He goes looking for Rachel after he gets his history test back. It's almost insultingly easy to find someone when you have her class schedule tucked in your wallet for quick reference, but it's definitely a time-saver. He catches her coming out of her chemistry class and falls into step beside her.
"Hey."
Her eyes are wide when she looks up at him. "Hi." He doesn't miss the way that she glances around, like she's looking to see if anyone is paying attention. It doesn't really matter if they are.
"I got my history test back," he tells her. "I got an eighty-nine."
"That's great!" she exclaims. She stops in front of her locker, but instead of putting in her combo, she turns to face him. "I'm proud of you."
It's like, weirdly sincere, these words coming from this girl. Honestly, they barely know each other, but the way that she says it. I'm proud of you. He can tell that she really means it.
His mom was the last person to say she was proud of him, after he'd signed away his rights to his kid. She'd said that she was proud of him for doing what was best for her. He'd kind of hated it then.
"Thanks," he mumbles to Rachel. "I'm pretty sure it's because you helped me."
She flashes him a really pretty smile. "Well, I am a good tutor." She turns to her locker and starts putting in the combo. "I'd be happy to help you study for the next exam as well, if you think you still need the assistance."
"Yeah?"
She glances up at him from beneath her eyelashes. "Sure. Studying with you was actually kind of fun."
He grins. She's not wrong, though it would have been more fun if she'd let him kiss her. Studying is as good an excuse as any to keep hanging out with her, so he agrees.
He stops at 7-11 the next morning, gets a grape slushie big gulp, and swings by Rachel's locker on his way to his first class. "This time it's a thank you," he tells her before she can say anything.
"I--"
"Later, Rach," he interrupts, winking at her before walking down the hallway.
*
"How's school going, Noah?" Dr. Berry asks.
Puck shrugs his shoulders. "Fine. We just had a grade check, and everything is a C or above." Actually, the only thing he has a C in is geometry, and that's because he missed all the stuff about proofs, and that shit's ridiculous. It's kind of weird, because other than studying for that history test with Rachel, Puck hasn't been working that much harder at school. He'll never admit it aloud, but it probably has something to do with the fact that he's actually going to class and half-paying attention to his homework instead of blowing it all off the way he was at the beginning of the year.
"That's an improvement, isn't it?"
"I did better last year," he admits, though he regrets it the second the words come out of his mouth.
"Were classes easier last year?" Dr. Berry asks.
"The only thing that's ever been hard for me is math," Puck says instead of answering the question, hoping that he'll drop the subject.
"What was different about last year then?"
He should have known Dr. Berry wasn't just going to drop it.
"I guess I had something to prove."
Dr. Berry's voice is quiet when he asks, "To whom?"
Quinn. "Everyone."
Dr. Berry nods, scribbling something on his notepad. "What was different about this year?"
Everything. Puck shrugs his shoulders instead of answering. He's done with this line of conversation.
"You've mentioned that sometimes people see you differently than you are," Dr. Berry begins, setting down his pen. "Do you think they might start to see you differently if you did well in school? More accurately, maybe?"
"No," Puck answers honestly.
"Why not?" Dr. Berry asks, his head tilted slightly to the left.
"It didn't work last time I tried, so why would it work now?"
It didn't matter what Puck did, Quinn was determined to give up their baby. He got a part-time job, he pulled his grades up, and he was even faithful to her. He was a better boyfriend to Quinn than he ever was to anyone else, and she made it pretty clear that she hated him for the whole situation the entire time they were together. And the second that they signed those papers, their relationship was over, such as it was to begin with. She legit acts like nothing ever happened.
Dr. Berry is watching Puck as closely as he ever has. "Who did you want to see you differently last year?"
"No one important."
That's the truth now, even if it wasn't then.
*
Rachel seems a lot more relaxed the second time that she comes to the house to help Puck study. She's wearing this dark blue dress with little flowers on it with red tights, which is actually sort of cute, and her hair is falling around her face in curls that are messy from the wind outside. It's sexy, really, and the fact that she's sitting on his bed with her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle while she leans back against his headboard to quiz him about Tudor England?
She's making focusing on the facts really difficult.
"You seem distracted," she says when he names Elizabeth as one of Henry VIII's wives, tilting her head at him.
"Wasn't Elizabeth his third wife?" Puck asks. He can't figure out how knowing any of this will ever be useful, but now that he's actually trying to learn the shit, it's annoying to get it wrong. But she's wearing this gold necklace with a little charm resting against her chest that he can't quite make out from where he's sitting, which is what he was paying attention to when she went over that crazy mnemonic device. Yeah, he's distracted.
"Jane Seymour was his third wife," she corrects gently. "Elizabeth was his daughter with Anne Boleyn, who was his second wife. She went on to become Elizabeth I, one of England's most well-known monarchs."
Puck rolls his eyes. "Even I think six wives is fucking ridiculous."
Her eyebrows come together a little. "Sorry," he mumbles. He figured that she's not really a fan of the cursing, so he's tried not to do it too much. That one slipped.
"You're frustrated," she says with a little shrug of her shoulders. "We can take a break."
Puck nods and stretches his arms over his head, arching his back. He's sitting in his desk chair, turned to face the bed, with his notebook balanced in his lap.
"You know, they did a television show about Henry VIII and his relationships a few years ago," Rachel says thoughtfully. "I'm sure it's rife with historical inaccuracies, but I've heard good things about its entertainment value."
"Hmm." He's distracted, again, by her necklace. "What is that?" he asks, moving forward so he's sitting on the bed beside her.
"What--what's what?" she stutters out nervously.
He brushes the tips of his fingers over her skin just beneath where the charm rest. "An XO," he murmurs, answering his own question. He watches her throat when she swallows. "Pretty."
"Thank you," she whispers. Her eyes are wide when he looks up at them. He's closer to her than he's ever been before, close enough that he can hear her shallow little breaths and see the lighter flecks of brown in her eyes. "Noah."
He can't remember ever hearing her say his name before, and something about the way his first name sounds when she whispers it makes him close the tiny bit of space between them, brushing his lips over hers. Her lips are so soft, and parted just slightly, so he does it again, but she pulls back before he can kiss her for real.
"What are you doing?" she asks.
"Do you want me to stop?" he asks instead of answering the question because it's pretty obvious that he's kissing her. He watches her eyes, sees the way that she looks at his mouth. He lets the pads of his fingers graze across her skin until they're just above her collarbone. "Rachel."
She kisses him instead of answering
He can tell right away that this isn't something that she's done a lot of. It isn't bad - it couldn't be, not when her lips are this soft and she makes these tiny little noises in the back of her throat - but some of her motions are unsure, like she doesn't know what to do next or where to put her hands. It's hot though, the way her fingers dig into his bicep when she opens her mouth under his, and the little whimper she lets out when his tongue brushes against hers for the first time.
The look on her face when he lays back and pulls her on top of him, her legs straddling his hips and her hair falling in a curtain around their faces, is enough to make his cock twitch. She blinks at him with big, wide eyes. "I don't--"
"Shh." He slips his hand into her hair - which is exactly as soft as it looks - and pulls her down gently until she's resting her hands against the pillow on either side of his head and kissing him again, a low sound coming from the back of her throat when he sucks lightly at her lower lip.
"We should be studying," she mumbles later, the words coming out between kisses. Puck doesn't agree, so he doesn't say anything, focusing his attention on trying to do whatever it was with his tongue that made her gasp and grind her hips down against his earlier. "Noah."
He groans instead of swearing like he'd like, because seriously? His name in her voice sounds fucking stellar.
She pushes herself away from him abruptly, sitting up straight and moving so she's kneeling next to him instead of being on top of him. "We have to stop," she insists.
"Is something wrong?"
"We need to study," she says instead of answering.
"Rachel." He watches her reach for her notebook, trying to discreetly smooth her hair. "Why are you freaking out?"
"I know all about your reputation," she says quietly, looking him straight in the eye. "I'm not that kind of girl."
"I know that," he tells her seriously. It's the truth. Rachel isn't like any other girl he's ever spent any time with. "And you know, not everything people say about me is true. Most of it, sure, but not all of it."
She smiles a little. "I know. I mean, I can already tell," she explains when he furrows his brow. "I think there's a very sweet guy hiding somewhere inside of you."
It's the kind of thing he'd normally scoff at, but the way that Rachel says it - like she really believes it - makes his stomach tighten a little, but not uncomfortably.
He leans over the edge of the bed to grab his notebook off the floor. "So this Henry guy married three chicks named Katherine, right?"
*
Puck had been worried, after Rachel left on Saturday, that she might think that making out meant more than just making out. She put her number in his phone and sent him a cute little text message (Studying was fun! xo) after she left, and he immediately went into panic mode.
He didn't really mean to make out with Rachel. It just happened, and even though it was awesome and he totally wouldn't mind if it happened again, it doesn't mean that he wants to be someone's boyfriend. Girls like Rachel take things too far, too fast, and he'd been afraid that a little tongue wrestling would make her think that they were a thing.
He saw her crossing the parking lot at school on Monday morning, walking beside Artie, who Puck knows from geometry, and all she did was smile at him before ducking her head so she could hear whatever it was that Artie was saying to her.
So he knows that what happened with Rachel means more to her than it would to someone like Santana, but she isn't going all Swimfan on him either, which is good. The point of getting to know her is so she won't hate him any more, and if she thinks that he broke her heart or whatever, she's definitely going to hate him.
Okay, so making out with Rachel was probably a bad idea.
Puck has poor impulse control. He has since he was a little kid with a bad habit of pushing kids down on the playground when they pissed him off. But after all of the stuff that happened last year, he's gotten better, with the exception of the ATM incident. What he's learned is that he just has to have a good reason not to do whatever it is that he wants to do. Letting Carrie DiMarco go down on him at a party or throwing a punch at Azimio for talking shit was just going to prove to Quinn that Puck wasn't good enough to be the father of her kid. Now, getting written up at school or fucking up this thing he's trying to get going with Rachel is going to land his ass back in juvie.
That means that he needs to make sure that he keeps things light with Rachel. He can't have her getting some crazy crush on him and crying to her dad about this guy who broke her heart.