Fic - NC-17 - Glee - Puck/Rachel - My Life, The Musical
Title: My Life, the Musical
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Genre: Hurt/Comfort (when do I ever do anything else), Angst, First-Time
Spoilers: Bits and pieces through to Home. Nothing after that.
Warnings: Dubcon (Jesse/Rachel), smexin’, wangst
Word Count: 5100ish
Summary: Rachel’s first time with Jesse is not all she thought it would be, the day after is awful, and Puck decides he is uniquely suited to improve her mood.
Author’s Note: This assumes Puck/Quinn isn’t a thing. Sorry to the Rachel/Jesse lovers out there, you probably won’t love this fic.
She tried to tell herself that she had enjoyed it. She had enjoyed it, hadn’t she? There had been nice feelings; but there had still been no orgasm. There had been sweet nothings and all the things she expected, no, would have demanded a man say to her during sex, and they had been...nice.
It had hurt. Rather a lot, actually. But she had superior pain management skills when it came down to it, so she didn’t think he knew. If he knew, which she hoped he didn’t, he hadn’t really cared very much.
And then there were some things he’d said which sounded innocent enough, but had struck nerves she didn’t know she had. Things like; ‘being the innocent ingénue is just so done, Rachel. Don’t you want to be the femme fatale? Don’t you want to step out of the stereotype that everyone expects you to be?’
She’d rather liked being the ingénue. But she’d felt too strange to tell him that.
Rachel shifted her legs together, fretfully. She had retreated from her house, to the local park, some time after he’d left. She wondered if people at school would be able to tell just from looking at her. Would they now be adding ‘slut’ to the other things they called her? She wanted prestige, she wanted fame, but she knew the people around her were unable to recognise her for the gem that she knew, hoped, tried to desperately believe that she was. She knew she couldn’t tell anyone from Glee. She wouldn’t tell her fathers. They wanted her to be a winner. She suspected that her actions weren’t one of a winner. There would be long lectures, disguised as pep talks. She wasn’t in the mood for that.
Actually, it had hurt a fair bit, now that she thought about it, because she still hurt a little now. Was that the normal ache she’d read about in her adult books? Or was it more sinister? Was there something wrong? He hadn’t been unduly rough, she assumed, but she worried...
She asked herself why she had assented. When she had assented. What part of ‘I’m not sure about this, Jesse,’ was code for, ‘go ahead, it’s fine.’ It wasn’t that she wasn’t into it, she had been into it. At some point she had said, ‘okay.’ At some point she had said, ‘no, really, I’m ready.’
But she didn’t want to do it again. Not with him, anyway. Her instincts were saying ‘no.’ Her desperation to know, to finally know what it was to be a woman had said, ‘yes, just, yes already.’
Rachel stood up and made her way home, where she could shower and do her homework like she did every night. She didn’t know what being a woman was supposed to feel like. She felt unexpectedly lost. Too lost to even spin it into some operatic tale of a young, frightened ingénue, which was so clichéd anyway. She was just...lost.
*
She hadn’t slept well. It wasn’t that she was scared of Jesse, it was just...her fantasy of what it was supposed to have been like had been shattered. She decided reluctantly that perhaps it could never have been perfect. How often did real life match up to her expectations? Never.
And how often was she the one suffering for that? All the time, it seemed.
She couldn’t bring herself to lower her expectations though. Not for them.
The next day at school, everything seemed to go normally. No one could tell by looking at her, and she played the game of normalcy that was one of the few things she regularly failed at, no matter what she tried, no matter how unlike herself she tried to be. Usually the insults washed over her to the point where she didn’t notice them, they were just the patina of highschool, like the dialogue and songs of The Pink Ladies in Grease. She didn’t even have to try very hard anymore to just see every insult as some clever scriptwriting, designed to help the audience realise just how hard done by she was, how cruel the world.
But it wasn’t working. Every insult hurt. Every cruel word, even those directed at others, seemed to emphasise a world broken into shards.
She stared at herself in the mirror in the girl’s bathrooms at lunch, the ones by the teacher’s bathrooms that were frequently empty precisely because of their location. She had checked to make sure no one else was in there before reapplying, staring at herself and saying;
‘You’re a melodramatic fool, Rachel Berry.’
She laughed at herself, because it was true, and then went back out to face class, food, sledges about how she’d forgotten her burqa. At first she had greeted that with strenuous objections to the overt racism and/or religious bigotry inherent in their words, but this had made them laugh even more, and so she went with ignoring it. Sometimes the scriptwriters were a little too witty, a little too crass, sometimes the musical tilted into some musical noir place, where there wasn’t supposed to be big, soaring scores; but only small, pretentious, melancholy numbers that would never grace Broadway.
*
At Glee practice, her world tilted. Jesse had told someone, or even all of them. They had all told each other and talked about it. When she walked in, she just knew. Because they looked at her like she was different. Quinn had smiled and sweetly said, ‘so desperate to get laid, hm?’ And Brittney had said, ‘did you sing to each other while it was happening? I can see you doing that.’ It wasn’t hurtful as far as insults went, but the others had laughed anyway when they’d heard it. And they weren’t laughing at Brittney.
Jesse was there, he shrugged at Rachel as if to say; ‘ignore them.’
She was trying, honestly. But Finn was giving her a look, and Jesse was kind of ignoring her, and she wondered if that was normal, and she was too hesitant to go up and wrap an arm around his torso and mutter something lyrical and perfect for the day after a first-time. This wasn’t how she’d imagined it go, she wouldn’t try and pull the tatters of that fantasy back together again. She knew better by now.
Will Schuester walked on the stage to hand them some revisions in their sheet music, and he didn’t know, but Santana quickly apprised him of the situation. Mr. Schue looked at Rachel surprised, and then sceptical, and then when no one denied it he wasn’t quite quick enough to hide his glimmer of disappointment.
She couldn’t ignore that.
She got through practice, she hit all her notes, she made all her cues. She was nauseous and feeling unwell, but when had that ever stopped her?
Rachel disappeared quickly after practice, waited for everyone to leave, and then came back in to sit in the far wing of the stage, where she sometimes liked to compose her thoughts. It seemed fitting. And there, in the shadows, sitting with her knees tucked under her and looking down at stains and old marks of sticky-tape on the floor, she heard the sounds of Finn and Jesse getting closer. She looked up and Finn had Jesse by the arm. Finn looked angry? Confused? They were on the stage, but although she could see them, she knew they wouldn’t be able to see her unless they were really looking.
‘Seriously, dude, why was she upset?’ Finn.
‘She wasn’t upset. And...’ A beat, more charm, ‘if she was, it was probably because she had some performance anxiety last night. You know Rachel, things need to be pretty perfect. There’s only so much a guy can do, you know? I’m sure you’ve come up against that.’ He said genially, she could hear the gentle smile in his voice, the same one he’d applied to her.
‘You better not be saying she was bad.’ Finn said, and her heart leapt, because that was a sweet thing to say. Well, it was sweet for Finn.
‘No, not bad! Just...’ Jesse trailed off, and Rachel felt her heart rise up somewhere near the top of her throat. Just?
‘Just what?’ Finn, asking a question that Rachel wasn’t sure she didn’t want answered.
‘Just...it’ll be better once it’s happened a few more times and she’s less inexperienced. For her. For everyone around her. The shy, innocent thing only goes so far, you know? But I respect Rachel too much to be talking about this with you. I don’t believe she was genuinely upset. I remember feeling a little dazed after my first time too. I’m sure you did as well.’
‘Yeah...’ Finn said, trailing off, all anger gone from his voice, and uncertainty there instead.
Rachel listened to Finn mumble something about needing to get home and then a muffled slap, like Jesse clapping him on the shoulder? Or vice versa? And then they were both walking out, exit stage left.
She pressed her fingers into her throat, because it had that hot feeling she got before she was about to cry. And she couldn’t gather her thoughts and cry at the same time. And she didn’t really want to cry, because it wasn’t like what he’d said had been a lie. She supposed she had been shy, she certainly was innocent in the technical sense, she imagined she would be much better once she’d experienced it a few more times.
And yet...
She startled when she saw Puck emerge from behind the curtains with his guitar, looking a little dazed himself. Oh god, had he heard the whole conversation? She hoped not. He didn’t look like he had, because he wasn’t grinning with malice. He twanged and then tuned some of the strings on his guitar and was searching the stage with his eyes curiously, absently, and then he swept the shadows directly where she was sitting. He kept looking around and then did a double take.
Oh no.
He turned, faced her, looked directly at her. His eyes narrowed.
‘Yeah, you heard all of that, didn’t you?’ He said, walking towards her, so that she felt like scooting backwards. She held her ground, looked up at him, wondered how much he could see of her face, knowing that none of the stage lights could find it.
She couldn’t find the smart reply that was always waiting at the tip of her tongue, so she just looked at up him, mute. He looked down at her, mouth pulled into a grimace, and then he sat down. He put the guitar next to him, where it made a hollow, musical noise.
He said nothing.
‘Puck...’ she hesitated, ‘...how did you feel after your first time? Presuming you, you can even remember back that far.’ She said, unable to resist sniping at him, she had to bring her walls of defense back up around her somehow.
‘Not as shitty as you are right now.’
‘I don’t think you should presume to know how I feel right now.’
‘Right.’ Puck drawled. ‘I sure won’t, Berry. After all, no one’s ever laid into me about being shy and innocent and bad at sex. And I’ve never been played the way you were played either. I’m the player.’
Rachel’s breath had hitched at his words, she tucked her legs closer to her body and picked at a loose nub of fabric on her skirt.
‘I think I’d like to be left alone.’ She said quietly.
‘Well, yeah, sure, clearly you’re not sitting here because you want the limelight. I’m just saying that...if he was any good at what he was doing, maybe he’d know that being new at something doesn’t always suck, and that he had just as much to do with what happened or went wrong or whatever as you did. We were all new at it once, y’know.’
‘Wise.’ She said, faintly mocking him, not really believing him, because he was Puck. She felt like she was being played again.
‘Don’t believe me. Whatever.’ He said.
‘Why are you staying back late?’ She said.
‘I play sometimes. Sing. Mostly play. I listen to you. I know you come back in here. You love the stage.’
‘I do.’ She said. Though at that moment, she didn’t. She felt rather cynical about the stage actually.
‘He was bad, wasn’t he?’ Puck said, suddenly.
‘He...it probably wasn’t him.’ She said, very soft.
‘Bullshit.’
‘Really, Puck?’ She burst out, incredulous. ‘Is it so hard to believe? You can’t look at what you’ve always known of me, and known about me, and what you’ve said to me, and believe him? Because I do. And I’m sure you do. I’m realistic enough to know that while I may idealise the idea of being the innocent, the stark reality is that it’s tedious, a burden.’ She added, an abrasiveness directed herself that she rarely voiced aloud, but frequently felt.
‘You fucking talk too much.’ He said, moving over to her, kissing her before she even knew what was happening. His lips were warm, his tongue hot, and she wondered if he could taste the raspberry lip-gloss she usually wore or if she had sung it all off during practice. And then she jerked back, because it was Puck, because...what was happening?
‘I’m not suddenly easy, Puck, just because I’ve had sex once.’
‘You taste good.’ He said, simply, making an observation. She shivered, wondered if she was cold, and thought maybe she should’ve brought a sweater with her to school, but she hadn’t been thinking straight that morning.
‘You...don’t taste bad.’ She said, hoping things between them would be even if she returned the compliment.
‘So many things I could say to that,’ he said, ‘but I won’t. Let me kiss you again. Or better yet, you kiss me. No one would have to know.’
‘Because you’d be ashamed of it.’ Rachel rejoined, and he laughed. He didn’t answer. And she was the one flushing with shame. She ducked her head and felt a gasp of pain stretching her lungs. She swallowed it, and it ached going down. Her whole body hurt. It had been a bad day.
‘No.’ He said, and he was shifting so that he was very close to her, sitting alongside her even, the heat of his body alongside the cold of hers. ‘Because we’re not going steady and because you don’t need a rep you can’t handle. And you could not handle it. And because Jesse is an asshole. I know assholes, Berry. You can trust me on that.’
‘You’re a card carrying membe-’ she made a hushed sound of surprise when his lips slanted across hers again, his hand carded through her hair gently, pulling through without causing knots. Where his fingers rested at her neck she felt tingly. Her hands came up to rest on his knees, and she kissed back, because she knew Puck’s mouth from before, because he didn’t taste that bad, because he was a good kisser.
‘You’ve had a lot of practice.’ She said, as she drew back.
‘I am a total whore.’ He agreed flippantly, smoothing his hand down her shoulder and then back up again, where his fingers rested on her neck. He seemed to feel her pulse, and then pressed two fingers against it, like a procedural show, checking to see if she was alive.
‘I can’t stand who I am.’ She said, and then bit her lip, because she hadn’t expected to voice that to anyone who could hear it, least of all Puck.
‘I know the feeling. I can’t stand who you are either.’ He laughed at his own joke, and then sobered. ‘Or me. Sometimes I think, ‘hey, I’m an awesome dude,’ and sometimes...’ he trailed off, smiled at her in the dim light, it was a predatory smile. She squirmed when she saw it, and he was trailing his fingers down from her pulse, over her collarbone, through her cleavage, so that she shivered, and then he rested his hand just beneath her breasts. She felt heated, aware, curious. She’d always been curious about Puck.
‘Do it.’ She said, breathless.
‘What?’ He said, flexing his fingers against her sweater.
‘Touch me.’
He may have looked surprised, but it didn’t stop him from moving his hand up, palming her breast softly, and then firmly, over her sweater. She felt her nipples get hard, and so did he, and he was exhaling and using the fabric of what she was wearing to rub against first one, then the second. That was hot, Rachel decided, that was definitely hot. Would’ve been nice if Jesse had done that last night, but a lot of it had seemed very perfunctory.
‘How did you want it to be? Your first time.’ He said, sneaking a hand up under her sweater and touching her with only the bra as a barrier. Rachel hummed under her breath, uncertainly. Something very nice was happening, but the question wasn’t what she expected.
‘Different. I wanted to...’ she paused, took a deep, shaky breath, because Puck was reaching around to undo her bra and then reaching back again, slowly.
‘I wanted to enjoy myself more.’ She said, laughing a little at the end. Because that seemed funny now. At the time, she had just assumed her first time would be fantastic. She thought people who had previous experience at sex were always good at it, especially if they looked and talked like Jesse; and people who had no experience, would learn very quickly.
‘You could enjoy yourself now.’ He said, and she smiled ruefully, yes, she could. The gym would be deserted for at least another hour today, the acoustics of this area of the wing weren’t so loud that they’d be heard through the auditorium, and Puck - Finn substitute that she had presumed he was -was doing some very nice things to her breasts. Nice enough that she felt like lying down, or leaning into him, or resting against a solid surface that would hold her weight, so she didn’t need to worry about keeping herself upright anymore.
‘I am.’ She said, and he kissed her again, in a hungry, complete way that had her seeking oxygen in deeper breaths, leaning into him, resting her hands against his chest. He leaned back into her, so that she was shifting backwards onto the cool, hard floor, on her back, hair spilling around her. She felt uncertainty then, again, but Puck smoothed it away with fingers that were unexpectedly gentle as they traced her hairline, her jaw, along her lip as he drew away to breathe.
That hand moved down her torso, down and then inside her upper thigh, and she shivered, couldn’t believe this was happening. But she wanted him, she thought maybe she just wanted to erase the memory of the previous night, maybe she just wanted to know if it was always going to be awkward and awful.
He was kissing her, and his hand was moving closer, slowly, to her underwear, until his index finger could trace up and down the damp fabric. It was a sensation that almost tickled, and she wriggled beneath him, narrowing her legs but running a palm along his ribs at the same time.
‘Sensitive.’ He murmured against her lips, ‘works for me.’
‘Does it?’ She asked, but he ignored her, was sneaking fingertips underneath her underwear and propping himself up with his other arm beside her, getting into a more relaxed position. His tongue was coasting across hers, and when his teeth dragged along her lower lip, she sighed, because he really was a good kisser.
He moved his fingers in the awkward space between cotton underwear and her warmth, moved gently, slowly into her folds, he brushed up against her clitoris and she mmmmmed against his mouth, and then he moved down lower, and she waited impatiently, because she wanted him inside of her. She did.
He pressed a finger in, and she gasped and then her hand moved from his torso to his wrist to stop him.
‘Oh no.’ She said, and he paused.
‘What?’
‘No, I’m just...I think,’ she closed her eyes in dismay, ‘I think I’m still too sore from last night. It...’
She trailed off, because he was withdrawing his hand and staring at her and she felt disgusted with herself. Was this when he would tell her just to man up? Had she done something wrong? She had honestly wanted him inside of her. But not if it would hurt. Not again. She had placed fingers inside herself before, she knew that didn’t usually hurt.
‘That fucking piece of...’ Puck trailed off, like he couldn’t think of an adequate word to complete his sentence. ‘Were you not like wet at all?’ He said, and Rachel shrugged. She tried to hide the relief that she felt that he was actually angry at Jesse, not her.
‘I don’t know, I was the one who told him to go ahead.’
‘Well he should’ve known better. I know better.’ He said, but he didn’t move away from her, started kissing her again, rubbing his fingers over her hipbones and soothing her with the time he took. And she wanted to think about what he meant, why Jesse should have known better, what she should be demanding next time she slept with someone, but it was hard to think when he was kissing her and she didn’t want to think about it anyway.
When his fingers hooked into her underwear and tugged down, she squeaked.
‘Noah!’ She said, and he pulled his lips away from hers.
‘Mm, babe?’ He said, still tugging, even though her hips weren’t complying.
‘I thought I said I was sore.’
‘I heard you. It kind of spoils the mood when the guy actually has to say; look, Rachel, can I eat you out? I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t hurt you. Here you are, being all unromantic about it.’
Rachel stared at him, her brain stopped working, and then she managed to find the one part of it she could always rely on in a crisis.
‘Really, Puck? Because exploring some teenage rite of passage in a theatre wing with Rachel ‘why won’t she ever shut up’ Berry isn’t unromantic enough for you?’
‘I dunno, I like it. It’s dark and kind of public, here in the shadows. But if we’re gonna talk about it, the mood is gonna be ruined even more. I mean geez, should I just go?’
‘No, I...’ should he? The idea of him doing that to her, made her feel both shivery and horrified. What if he hated it? What if he was just doing it to make her feel better? And then she laughed. She laughed because it was Puck, who didn’t do anything to make other people feel better, unless he got something out of it as well. And then she looked at him, studied his shadowed face, saw the gleam of want in his own eyes, felt the gentle slow tugs as he tried to remind her that her underwear was unwelcome.
She lifted her hips and smiled at him at the same time. He smiled back as he eased them down, over her knee high socks, over her staid boots.
‘I’ve never done this before.’ She admitted, shakily, and he snorted as he lifted her shirt and kissed the smooth skin of her belly.
‘No duh, Rachel.’ He mocked her, gently. ‘Besides,’ he said so that his breath was skating across her skin, ‘you don’t have to do anything much anyway.’
He pushed her down gently, and she felt him nuzzling at her skin. She could hear her own shivery breathing, feel the cool of the hard ground beneath her and the contrasting fire of Puck’s hands against her upper thighs. His fingers moved in a soothing pattern. She told herself she could not believe this was happening, but she could. She thought this was more believable than anything she’d done with Jesse the night before.
His mouth moved lower, and as it lost contact with her skin, because of the rim of her skirt, his hands moved in its place, gently pushing her thighs further apart.
‘Aren’t you uncomfortable?’ She said suddenly, nervously, and bit her lower lip between her teeth.
‘Shut up,’ he said, amused, affectionate, in a lower register than she was used to hearing him talk. She was thinking of how that didn’t actually answer her question, when she felt his breath hot against her centre. She gasped, the sound sharp. Her arm reached up and she placed her hand near her mouth, because maybe she’d need the comfort of knowing she could shut herself up later.
He was kissing her, down there, and she was staring wide eyed at the ceiling. When his tongue dipped between her folds, she felt her thighs tense, and his hands braced against them, keeping them apart. Was her breathing getting shakier?
‘Oh.’ She said, licking her own lips hungrily, hyperaware of every minute movement his tongue was making, every gentle shift of his fingers. When he parted her folds, she closed her eyes, clenched the ground, wondered what to expect.
She should have known that he would be great at it. She didn’t know why she expected otherwise. When his tongue found the side of her clitoris and started regularly flicking there, she moaned, high and breathy. And then when it moved down and actually dipped inside of her, she found that it didn’t hurt at all, and it felt extraordinarily different to her own fingers, and slick and hot and fantastic. She hummed happily, curiously, and he made a sound in the back of his throat, like he was enjoying it too, and she used that to shut up the voice inside of her that told her he must be hating it.
He worked her over with his tongue deftly, easily, like someone had given him a manual to her body that she didn’t have. It was almost shameful how quickly he brought her from nervousness to spreading her legs wider, shoving her palm over her mouth so she could moan throatily into it and then mumble his name. And when she moved her palm away so she could breathe better, little ‘uh’ noises escaped the back of her throat, made deeper from a rehearsal of singing.
He focused his tongue on her clitoris now, directly, flicking and moving over it, making her hips roll and forcing him to use a hand to hold them down. With his other hand he reached up, grabbed the spare hand she had down by her waist, digging fingers into the unforgiving floor. He wrapped his hand around hers, and then slid his fingers down her own, and oh goodness, she thought, he was holding her hand. He was actually holding her hand and squeezing like he cared about her.
She squeezed back, hard, and then felt a heat catch in the lower half of her torso and radiate outwards. She knew it was kind of an inevitable point to something like this but the idea that she was going to orgasm in a public place, thanks to Puck’s mouth, left her dazed and gasping for air.
‘Noah,’ she warned him, but he knew, he didn’t care. She felt him increase the firmness of his tongue against her, and she saw stars. Her spare hand flew to her mouth, and she keened into it as the tension within her collected together, tighter and tighter. The sensations within her body seemed too big to be contained, like all the times she’d ever sung high notes and known they were perfect, all gathered together right now to make this moment. She cursed in her head, cried out, and then it all pitched and she fell headlong into her orgasm, spasming against him, legs pressing together unconsciously, hand jerking at his hand.
He had stayed down between her legs, lost in something himself for a second, eyes pressed shut. He too, seemed to be shaking, and then he was moving up over her and pressing himself into the side of her body, resting his head on his shoulder, breathing hard.
She thought of a hundred things she could say to him, but instead all she could do was breathe. Belatedly, she moved her hand away from her mouth and gasped in lungfuls of air. He kissed her cheek when she did this, she felt him smile against her.
‘Oh.’ She said again, ‘why couldn’t my first time be like that?’
‘Your first time with me could be like that. That would count as a kind of first time, right?’ He opened his mouth to say something else and then swore distracted, under his breath. He shifted his legs and suddenly Rachel lifted her head, looked down.
‘Did you-?’
‘Well, what did you expect?’ He said defensively, shifting his jeans, grimacing in distaste. ‘You were hot. These things happen.’
‘I don’t mind.’ She ventured, because it seemed like that might be why he was defensive. He paused, looked at her, sighed.
‘Whatever.’
She sat up, swallowed, decided that maybe her relationship with Jesse was over, and that even if she got more of the experience that was apparently going to make her even better at this, she didn’t want to share it with him anymore.
‘So what now?’ She said, smoothing her skirt back down over her thighs,
‘I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.’ He said, and she took a deep breath.
‘That seems like a fair arrangement.’
‘I’d...want to do this again if you wanted to.’ He said, deeper, more huskily, like he was admitting to some deep, dark secret.
‘I...’ Rachel paused, held his eyes, ‘that would be fair too.’
He smiled at her, like it held a secret that only she knew, and then he picked up his guitar and gave her a once over before walking away, back behind the curtains. In a moment, it was like he’d never been there, except her underwear was clumped near her foot, and her blood still raced pleasantly. Yes, she decided, it would be a more than fair arrangement to see him again like this.
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Genre: Hurt/Comfort (when do I ever do anything else), Angst, First-Time
Spoilers: Bits and pieces through to Home. Nothing after that.
Warnings: Dubcon (Jesse/Rachel), smexin’, wangst
Word Count: 5100ish
Summary: Rachel’s first time with Jesse is not all she thought it would be, the day after is awful, and Puck decides he is uniquely suited to improve her mood.
Author’s Note: This assumes Puck/Quinn isn’t a thing. Sorry to the Rachel/Jesse lovers out there, you probably won’t love this fic.
She tried to tell herself that she had enjoyed it. She had enjoyed it, hadn’t she? There had been nice feelings; but there had still been no orgasm. There had been sweet nothings and all the things she expected, no, would have demanded a man say to her during sex, and they had been...nice.
It had hurt. Rather a lot, actually. But she had superior pain management skills when it came down to it, so she didn’t think he knew. If he knew, which she hoped he didn’t, he hadn’t really cared very much.
And then there were some things he’d said which sounded innocent enough, but had struck nerves she didn’t know she had. Things like; ‘being the innocent ingénue is just so done, Rachel. Don’t you want to be the femme fatale? Don’t you want to step out of the stereotype that everyone expects you to be?’
She’d rather liked being the ingénue. But she’d felt too strange to tell him that.
Rachel shifted her legs together, fretfully. She had retreated from her house, to the local park, some time after he’d left. She wondered if people at school would be able to tell just from looking at her. Would they now be adding ‘slut’ to the other things they called her? She wanted prestige, she wanted fame, but she knew the people around her were unable to recognise her for the gem that she knew, hoped, tried to desperately believe that she was. She knew she couldn’t tell anyone from Glee. She wouldn’t tell her fathers. They wanted her to be a winner. She suspected that her actions weren’t one of a winner. There would be long lectures, disguised as pep talks. She wasn’t in the mood for that.
Actually, it had hurt a fair bit, now that she thought about it, because she still hurt a little now. Was that the normal ache she’d read about in her adult books? Or was it more sinister? Was there something wrong? He hadn’t been unduly rough, she assumed, but she worried...
She asked herself why she had assented. When she had assented. What part of ‘I’m not sure about this, Jesse,’ was code for, ‘go ahead, it’s fine.’ It wasn’t that she wasn’t into it, she had been into it. At some point she had said, ‘okay.’ At some point she had said, ‘no, really, I’m ready.’
But she didn’t want to do it again. Not with him, anyway. Her instincts were saying ‘no.’ Her desperation to know, to finally know what it was to be a woman had said, ‘yes, just, yes already.’
Rachel stood up and made her way home, where she could shower and do her homework like she did every night. She didn’t know what being a woman was supposed to feel like. She felt unexpectedly lost. Too lost to even spin it into some operatic tale of a young, frightened ingénue, which was so clichéd anyway. She was just...lost.
*
She hadn’t slept well. It wasn’t that she was scared of Jesse, it was just...her fantasy of what it was supposed to have been like had been shattered. She decided reluctantly that perhaps it could never have been perfect. How often did real life match up to her expectations? Never.
And how often was she the one suffering for that? All the time, it seemed.
She couldn’t bring herself to lower her expectations though. Not for them.
The next day at school, everything seemed to go normally. No one could tell by looking at her, and she played the game of normalcy that was one of the few things she regularly failed at, no matter what she tried, no matter how unlike herself she tried to be. Usually the insults washed over her to the point where she didn’t notice them, they were just the patina of highschool, like the dialogue and songs of The Pink Ladies in Grease. She didn’t even have to try very hard anymore to just see every insult as some clever scriptwriting, designed to help the audience realise just how hard done by she was, how cruel the world.
But it wasn’t working. Every insult hurt. Every cruel word, even those directed at others, seemed to emphasise a world broken into shards.
She stared at herself in the mirror in the girl’s bathrooms at lunch, the ones by the teacher’s bathrooms that were frequently empty precisely because of their location. She had checked to make sure no one else was in there before reapplying, staring at herself and saying;
‘You’re a melodramatic fool, Rachel Berry.’
She laughed at herself, because it was true, and then went back out to face class, food, sledges about how she’d forgotten her burqa. At first she had greeted that with strenuous objections to the overt racism and/or religious bigotry inherent in their words, but this had made them laugh even more, and so she went with ignoring it. Sometimes the scriptwriters were a little too witty, a little too crass, sometimes the musical tilted into some musical noir place, where there wasn’t supposed to be big, soaring scores; but only small, pretentious, melancholy numbers that would never grace Broadway.
*
At Glee practice, her world tilted. Jesse had told someone, or even all of them. They had all told each other and talked about it. When she walked in, she just knew. Because they looked at her like she was different. Quinn had smiled and sweetly said, ‘so desperate to get laid, hm?’ And Brittney had said, ‘did you sing to each other while it was happening? I can see you doing that.’ It wasn’t hurtful as far as insults went, but the others had laughed anyway when they’d heard it. And they weren’t laughing at Brittney.
Jesse was there, he shrugged at Rachel as if to say; ‘ignore them.’
She was trying, honestly. But Finn was giving her a look, and Jesse was kind of ignoring her, and she wondered if that was normal, and she was too hesitant to go up and wrap an arm around his torso and mutter something lyrical and perfect for the day after a first-time. This wasn’t how she’d imagined it go, she wouldn’t try and pull the tatters of that fantasy back together again. She knew better by now.
Will Schuester walked on the stage to hand them some revisions in their sheet music, and he didn’t know, but Santana quickly apprised him of the situation. Mr. Schue looked at Rachel surprised, and then sceptical, and then when no one denied it he wasn’t quite quick enough to hide his glimmer of disappointment.
She couldn’t ignore that.
She got through practice, she hit all her notes, she made all her cues. She was nauseous and feeling unwell, but when had that ever stopped her?
Rachel disappeared quickly after practice, waited for everyone to leave, and then came back in to sit in the far wing of the stage, where she sometimes liked to compose her thoughts. It seemed fitting. And there, in the shadows, sitting with her knees tucked under her and looking down at stains and old marks of sticky-tape on the floor, she heard the sounds of Finn and Jesse getting closer. She looked up and Finn had Jesse by the arm. Finn looked angry? Confused? They were on the stage, but although she could see them, she knew they wouldn’t be able to see her unless they were really looking.
‘Seriously, dude, why was she upset?’ Finn.
‘She wasn’t upset. And...’ A beat, more charm, ‘if she was, it was probably because she had some performance anxiety last night. You know Rachel, things need to be pretty perfect. There’s only so much a guy can do, you know? I’m sure you’ve come up against that.’ He said genially, she could hear the gentle smile in his voice, the same one he’d applied to her.
‘You better not be saying she was bad.’ Finn said, and her heart leapt, because that was a sweet thing to say. Well, it was sweet for Finn.
‘No, not bad! Just...’ Jesse trailed off, and Rachel felt her heart rise up somewhere near the top of her throat. Just?
‘Just what?’ Finn, asking a question that Rachel wasn’t sure she didn’t want answered.
‘Just...it’ll be better once it’s happened a few more times and she’s less inexperienced. For her. For everyone around her. The shy, innocent thing only goes so far, you know? But I respect Rachel too much to be talking about this with you. I don’t believe she was genuinely upset. I remember feeling a little dazed after my first time too. I’m sure you did as well.’
‘Yeah...’ Finn said, trailing off, all anger gone from his voice, and uncertainty there instead.
Rachel listened to Finn mumble something about needing to get home and then a muffled slap, like Jesse clapping him on the shoulder? Or vice versa? And then they were both walking out, exit stage left.
She pressed her fingers into her throat, because it had that hot feeling she got before she was about to cry. And she couldn’t gather her thoughts and cry at the same time. And she didn’t really want to cry, because it wasn’t like what he’d said had been a lie. She supposed she had been shy, she certainly was innocent in the technical sense, she imagined she would be much better once she’d experienced it a few more times.
And yet...
She startled when she saw Puck emerge from behind the curtains with his guitar, looking a little dazed himself. Oh god, had he heard the whole conversation? She hoped not. He didn’t look like he had, because he wasn’t grinning with malice. He twanged and then tuned some of the strings on his guitar and was searching the stage with his eyes curiously, absently, and then he swept the shadows directly where she was sitting. He kept looking around and then did a double take.
Oh no.
He turned, faced her, looked directly at her. His eyes narrowed.
‘Yeah, you heard all of that, didn’t you?’ He said, walking towards her, so that she felt like scooting backwards. She held her ground, looked up at him, wondered how much he could see of her face, knowing that none of the stage lights could find it.
She couldn’t find the smart reply that was always waiting at the tip of her tongue, so she just looked at up him, mute. He looked down at her, mouth pulled into a grimace, and then he sat down. He put the guitar next to him, where it made a hollow, musical noise.
He said nothing.
‘Puck...’ she hesitated, ‘...how did you feel after your first time? Presuming you, you can even remember back that far.’ She said, unable to resist sniping at him, she had to bring her walls of defense back up around her somehow.
‘Not as shitty as you are right now.’
‘I don’t think you should presume to know how I feel right now.’
‘Right.’ Puck drawled. ‘I sure won’t, Berry. After all, no one’s ever laid into me about being shy and innocent and bad at sex. And I’ve never been played the way you were played either. I’m the player.’
Rachel’s breath had hitched at his words, she tucked her legs closer to her body and picked at a loose nub of fabric on her skirt.
‘I think I’d like to be left alone.’ She said quietly.
‘Well, yeah, sure, clearly you’re not sitting here because you want the limelight. I’m just saying that...if he was any good at what he was doing, maybe he’d know that being new at something doesn’t always suck, and that he had just as much to do with what happened or went wrong or whatever as you did. We were all new at it once, y’know.’
‘Wise.’ She said, faintly mocking him, not really believing him, because he was Puck. She felt like she was being played again.
‘Don’t believe me. Whatever.’ He said.
‘Why are you staying back late?’ She said.
‘I play sometimes. Sing. Mostly play. I listen to you. I know you come back in here. You love the stage.’
‘I do.’ She said. Though at that moment, she didn’t. She felt rather cynical about the stage actually.
‘He was bad, wasn’t he?’ Puck said, suddenly.
‘He...it probably wasn’t him.’ She said, very soft.
‘Bullshit.’
‘Really, Puck?’ She burst out, incredulous. ‘Is it so hard to believe? You can’t look at what you’ve always known of me, and known about me, and what you’ve said to me, and believe him? Because I do. And I’m sure you do. I’m realistic enough to know that while I may idealise the idea of being the innocent, the stark reality is that it’s tedious, a burden.’ She added, an abrasiveness directed herself that she rarely voiced aloud, but frequently felt.
‘You fucking talk too much.’ He said, moving over to her, kissing her before she even knew what was happening. His lips were warm, his tongue hot, and she wondered if he could taste the raspberry lip-gloss she usually wore or if she had sung it all off during practice. And then she jerked back, because it was Puck, because...what was happening?
‘I’m not suddenly easy, Puck, just because I’ve had sex once.’
‘You taste good.’ He said, simply, making an observation. She shivered, wondered if she was cold, and thought maybe she should’ve brought a sweater with her to school, but she hadn’t been thinking straight that morning.
‘You...don’t taste bad.’ She said, hoping things between them would be even if she returned the compliment.
‘So many things I could say to that,’ he said, ‘but I won’t. Let me kiss you again. Or better yet, you kiss me. No one would have to know.’
‘Because you’d be ashamed of it.’ Rachel rejoined, and he laughed. He didn’t answer. And she was the one flushing with shame. She ducked her head and felt a gasp of pain stretching her lungs. She swallowed it, and it ached going down. Her whole body hurt. It had been a bad day.
‘No.’ He said, and he was shifting so that he was very close to her, sitting alongside her even, the heat of his body alongside the cold of hers. ‘Because we’re not going steady and because you don’t need a rep you can’t handle. And you could not handle it. And because Jesse is an asshole. I know assholes, Berry. You can trust me on that.’
‘You’re a card carrying membe-’ she made a hushed sound of surprise when his lips slanted across hers again, his hand carded through her hair gently, pulling through without causing knots. Where his fingers rested at her neck she felt tingly. Her hands came up to rest on his knees, and she kissed back, because she knew Puck’s mouth from before, because he didn’t taste that bad, because he was a good kisser.
‘You’ve had a lot of practice.’ She said, as she drew back.
‘I am a total whore.’ He agreed flippantly, smoothing his hand down her shoulder and then back up again, where his fingers rested on her neck. He seemed to feel her pulse, and then pressed two fingers against it, like a procedural show, checking to see if she was alive.
‘I can’t stand who I am.’ She said, and then bit her lip, because she hadn’t expected to voice that to anyone who could hear it, least of all Puck.
‘I know the feeling. I can’t stand who you are either.’ He laughed at his own joke, and then sobered. ‘Or me. Sometimes I think, ‘hey, I’m an awesome dude,’ and sometimes...’ he trailed off, smiled at her in the dim light, it was a predatory smile. She squirmed when she saw it, and he was trailing his fingers down from her pulse, over her collarbone, through her cleavage, so that she shivered, and then he rested his hand just beneath her breasts. She felt heated, aware, curious. She’d always been curious about Puck.
‘Do it.’ She said, breathless.
‘What?’ He said, flexing his fingers against her sweater.
‘Touch me.’
He may have looked surprised, but it didn’t stop him from moving his hand up, palming her breast softly, and then firmly, over her sweater. She felt her nipples get hard, and so did he, and he was exhaling and using the fabric of what she was wearing to rub against first one, then the second. That was hot, Rachel decided, that was definitely hot. Would’ve been nice if Jesse had done that last night, but a lot of it had seemed very perfunctory.
‘How did you want it to be? Your first time.’ He said, sneaking a hand up under her sweater and touching her with only the bra as a barrier. Rachel hummed under her breath, uncertainly. Something very nice was happening, but the question wasn’t what she expected.
‘Different. I wanted to...’ she paused, took a deep, shaky breath, because Puck was reaching around to undo her bra and then reaching back again, slowly.
‘I wanted to enjoy myself more.’ She said, laughing a little at the end. Because that seemed funny now. At the time, she had just assumed her first time would be fantastic. She thought people who had previous experience at sex were always good at it, especially if they looked and talked like Jesse; and people who had no experience, would learn very quickly.
‘You could enjoy yourself now.’ He said, and she smiled ruefully, yes, she could. The gym would be deserted for at least another hour today, the acoustics of this area of the wing weren’t so loud that they’d be heard through the auditorium, and Puck - Finn substitute that she had presumed he was -was doing some very nice things to her breasts. Nice enough that she felt like lying down, or leaning into him, or resting against a solid surface that would hold her weight, so she didn’t need to worry about keeping herself upright anymore.
‘I am.’ She said, and he kissed her again, in a hungry, complete way that had her seeking oxygen in deeper breaths, leaning into him, resting her hands against his chest. He leaned back into her, so that she was shifting backwards onto the cool, hard floor, on her back, hair spilling around her. She felt uncertainty then, again, but Puck smoothed it away with fingers that were unexpectedly gentle as they traced her hairline, her jaw, along her lip as he drew away to breathe.
That hand moved down her torso, down and then inside her upper thigh, and she shivered, couldn’t believe this was happening. But she wanted him, she thought maybe she just wanted to erase the memory of the previous night, maybe she just wanted to know if it was always going to be awkward and awful.
He was kissing her, and his hand was moving closer, slowly, to her underwear, until his index finger could trace up and down the damp fabric. It was a sensation that almost tickled, and she wriggled beneath him, narrowing her legs but running a palm along his ribs at the same time.
‘Sensitive.’ He murmured against her lips, ‘works for me.’
‘Does it?’ She asked, but he ignored her, was sneaking fingertips underneath her underwear and propping himself up with his other arm beside her, getting into a more relaxed position. His tongue was coasting across hers, and when his teeth dragged along her lower lip, she sighed, because he really was a good kisser.
He moved his fingers in the awkward space between cotton underwear and her warmth, moved gently, slowly into her folds, he brushed up against her clitoris and she mmmmmed against his mouth, and then he moved down lower, and she waited impatiently, because she wanted him inside of her. She did.
He pressed a finger in, and she gasped and then her hand moved from his torso to his wrist to stop him.
‘Oh no.’ She said, and he paused.
‘What?’
‘No, I’m just...I think,’ she closed her eyes in dismay, ‘I think I’m still too sore from last night. It...’
She trailed off, because he was withdrawing his hand and staring at her and she felt disgusted with herself. Was this when he would tell her just to man up? Had she done something wrong? She had honestly wanted him inside of her. But not if it would hurt. Not again. She had placed fingers inside herself before, she knew that didn’t usually hurt.
‘That fucking piece of...’ Puck trailed off, like he couldn’t think of an adequate word to complete his sentence. ‘Were you not like wet at all?’ He said, and Rachel shrugged. She tried to hide the relief that she felt that he was actually angry at Jesse, not her.
‘I don’t know, I was the one who told him to go ahead.’
‘Well he should’ve known better. I know better.’ He said, but he didn’t move away from her, started kissing her again, rubbing his fingers over her hipbones and soothing her with the time he took. And she wanted to think about what he meant, why Jesse should have known better, what she should be demanding next time she slept with someone, but it was hard to think when he was kissing her and she didn’t want to think about it anyway.
When his fingers hooked into her underwear and tugged down, she squeaked.
‘Noah!’ She said, and he pulled his lips away from hers.
‘Mm, babe?’ He said, still tugging, even though her hips weren’t complying.
‘I thought I said I was sore.’
‘I heard you. It kind of spoils the mood when the guy actually has to say; look, Rachel, can I eat you out? I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t hurt you. Here you are, being all unromantic about it.’
Rachel stared at him, her brain stopped working, and then she managed to find the one part of it she could always rely on in a crisis.
‘Really, Puck? Because exploring some teenage rite of passage in a theatre wing with Rachel ‘why won’t she ever shut up’ Berry isn’t unromantic enough for you?’
‘I dunno, I like it. It’s dark and kind of public, here in the shadows. But if we’re gonna talk about it, the mood is gonna be ruined even more. I mean geez, should I just go?’
‘No, I...’ should he? The idea of him doing that to her, made her feel both shivery and horrified. What if he hated it? What if he was just doing it to make her feel better? And then she laughed. She laughed because it was Puck, who didn’t do anything to make other people feel better, unless he got something out of it as well. And then she looked at him, studied his shadowed face, saw the gleam of want in his own eyes, felt the gentle slow tugs as he tried to remind her that her underwear was unwelcome.
She lifted her hips and smiled at him at the same time. He smiled back as he eased them down, over her knee high socks, over her staid boots.
‘I’ve never done this before.’ She admitted, shakily, and he snorted as he lifted her shirt and kissed the smooth skin of her belly.
‘No duh, Rachel.’ He mocked her, gently. ‘Besides,’ he said so that his breath was skating across her skin, ‘you don’t have to do anything much anyway.’
He pushed her down gently, and she felt him nuzzling at her skin. She could hear her own shivery breathing, feel the cool of the hard ground beneath her and the contrasting fire of Puck’s hands against her upper thighs. His fingers moved in a soothing pattern. She told herself she could not believe this was happening, but she could. She thought this was more believable than anything she’d done with Jesse the night before.
His mouth moved lower, and as it lost contact with her skin, because of the rim of her skirt, his hands moved in its place, gently pushing her thighs further apart.
‘Aren’t you uncomfortable?’ She said suddenly, nervously, and bit her lower lip between her teeth.
‘Shut up,’ he said, amused, affectionate, in a lower register than she was used to hearing him talk. She was thinking of how that didn’t actually answer her question, when she felt his breath hot against her centre. She gasped, the sound sharp. Her arm reached up and she placed her hand near her mouth, because maybe she’d need the comfort of knowing she could shut herself up later.
He was kissing her, down there, and she was staring wide eyed at the ceiling. When his tongue dipped between her folds, she felt her thighs tense, and his hands braced against them, keeping them apart. Was her breathing getting shakier?
‘Oh.’ She said, licking her own lips hungrily, hyperaware of every minute movement his tongue was making, every gentle shift of his fingers. When he parted her folds, she closed her eyes, clenched the ground, wondered what to expect.
She should have known that he would be great at it. She didn’t know why she expected otherwise. When his tongue found the side of her clitoris and started regularly flicking there, she moaned, high and breathy. And then when it moved down and actually dipped inside of her, she found that it didn’t hurt at all, and it felt extraordinarily different to her own fingers, and slick and hot and fantastic. She hummed happily, curiously, and he made a sound in the back of his throat, like he was enjoying it too, and she used that to shut up the voice inside of her that told her he must be hating it.
He worked her over with his tongue deftly, easily, like someone had given him a manual to her body that she didn’t have. It was almost shameful how quickly he brought her from nervousness to spreading her legs wider, shoving her palm over her mouth so she could moan throatily into it and then mumble his name. And when she moved her palm away so she could breathe better, little ‘uh’ noises escaped the back of her throat, made deeper from a rehearsal of singing.
He focused his tongue on her clitoris now, directly, flicking and moving over it, making her hips roll and forcing him to use a hand to hold them down. With his other hand he reached up, grabbed the spare hand she had down by her waist, digging fingers into the unforgiving floor. He wrapped his hand around hers, and then slid his fingers down her own, and oh goodness, she thought, he was holding her hand. He was actually holding her hand and squeezing like he cared about her.
She squeezed back, hard, and then felt a heat catch in the lower half of her torso and radiate outwards. She knew it was kind of an inevitable point to something like this but the idea that she was going to orgasm in a public place, thanks to Puck’s mouth, left her dazed and gasping for air.
‘Noah,’ she warned him, but he knew, he didn’t care. She felt him increase the firmness of his tongue against her, and she saw stars. Her spare hand flew to her mouth, and she keened into it as the tension within her collected together, tighter and tighter. The sensations within her body seemed too big to be contained, like all the times she’d ever sung high notes and known they were perfect, all gathered together right now to make this moment. She cursed in her head, cried out, and then it all pitched and she fell headlong into her orgasm, spasming against him, legs pressing together unconsciously, hand jerking at his hand.
He had stayed down between her legs, lost in something himself for a second, eyes pressed shut. He too, seemed to be shaking, and then he was moving up over her and pressing himself into the side of her body, resting his head on his shoulder, breathing hard.
She thought of a hundred things she could say to him, but instead all she could do was breathe. Belatedly, she moved her hand away from her mouth and gasped in lungfuls of air. He kissed her cheek when she did this, she felt him smile against her.
‘Oh.’ She said again, ‘why couldn’t my first time be like that?’
‘Your first time with me could be like that. That would count as a kind of first time, right?’ He opened his mouth to say something else and then swore distracted, under his breath. He shifted his legs and suddenly Rachel lifted her head, looked down.
‘Did you-?’
‘Well, what did you expect?’ He said defensively, shifting his jeans, grimacing in distaste. ‘You were hot. These things happen.’
‘I don’t mind.’ She ventured, because it seemed like that might be why he was defensive. He paused, looked at her, sighed.
‘Whatever.’
She sat up, swallowed, decided that maybe her relationship with Jesse was over, and that even if she got more of the experience that was apparently going to make her even better at this, she didn’t want to share it with him anymore.
‘So what now?’ She said, smoothing her skirt back down over her thighs,
‘I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.’ He said, and she took a deep breath.
‘That seems like a fair arrangement.’
‘I’d...want to do this again if you wanted to.’ He said, deeper, more huskily, like he was admitting to some deep, dark secret.
‘I...’ Rachel paused, held his eyes, ‘that would be fair too.’
He smiled at her, like it held a secret that only she knew, and then he picked up his guitar and gave her a once over before walking away, back behind the curtains. In a moment, it was like he’d never been there, except her underwear was clumped near her foot, and her blood still raced pleasantly. Yes, she decided, it would be a more than fair arrangement to see him again like this.