Bright Particular Star IX
Bright Particular Star
*****
Title: Bright Particular Star
Chapter: 9/10
Rating: M
Characters: Puck/Rachel
Word Count: ~4600
Summary: When he really needs someone, it's his truest instinct to go to her...
All right, so sometimes he is kind of an asshole.
When he lets loose with that crap about Finn, he's not even surprised. It's been burning on the edge of his tongue since he saw the two of them in the kitchen and for a split second he wants to puke or hit something because he doesn't know what Hudson's hand on her wrist means. And sure, he figures it out, but even after he kicks Hudson's ass out of the house he can still feel it, heavy and metallic, until the words pour out and he's managed to piss her off.
She's almost out the truck door before he can even start to wipe the stupid jealous look off his face, and there's a moment of blind panic where he needs to do or say something now, and he's got nothing. And then, who knows, maybe it's some seriously fucked up message from the universe, but all his barely functioning brain can do is throw him three weeks back to the last time he saw Eli.
It's the beginning of August and he's alone with his father. which he usually avoids at all costs. but after an hour or so of staring at his mother's tired face, he sends her home to get some sleep. And shit, if it makes her feel better to have someone sitting with a guy who's probably not going to wake up all night, he'll do it. Hell, it's the least he can do, considering he's only down for the weekend and has to head back to Michigan for a roofing job tomorrow.
He props his legs up on the end of the hospital bed, or hospice bed, or whatever. They try to make it homey, hide the monitors behind screens, put up curtains and hang pictures on the wall, but in the end, it's still just a place to die and he fucking hates it. Free WiFi is about the only thing that makes his visits here at all tolerable; he's got his laptop on his knees and he's smiling for what seems like the first time in days over Rachel's latest email.
"Is that the girl?" Eli's thin voice makes him jump and he meets his own eyes in a hollow face, the body with skin stretched tight over a shrunken frame.
"What girl?" he asks shortly, snapping the laptop shut. Eli doesn't get to talk about Rachel, ever.
"You know. The one your mother is always talking about."
Puck shrugs and busies himself straightening the older man's covers and holding up a cup of water so he can drink.
"Sounds like she's important. Noah, I wish...I should have..."
He cuts him off because no, not going to happen. "Don't even start..." He stops, closes his eyes momentarily and then with a massive effort, gentles his voice. "Dad. No offense, but the best, shit, the only thing you ever taught me about women was how not to treat them."
But at the same time, he's awkwardly patting Eli's arm and when Eli moves to take his hand, he lets him.
His father's eyes close and Puck thinks he's gone back to sleep when Eli speaks one more time. "That's probably good. That's something, anyway."
And maybe it is something, because at the moment at least, it's enough to tell him that he's being an idiot and he somehow manages to figure out something to say that gets her to stay.
Helps that it's true.
And then like she's shy or like she thinks she's crossed some invisible line where he's just going to bail, she says it. "Well, you've got me right now."
All sorts of alarm bells are ringing or maybe it's just the blood rushing in his ears because he wants exactly that and even the 'right now' (like now, but not later?) can't drown out the satisfied voice in his head that's crowing 'mine'.
Maybe he even says it out loud because she's giving a breathy little gasp, or maybe that's down to him kissing that spot behind her ear that makes her shudder and then he slides around, tongue swiping out to taste her strawberry lipgloss (he's missed that fucking lipgloss). And she's right there with him when he's opening her mouth with his and it feels overwhelming and fucking amazing at exactly the same time, just like it always does when she's around and he's got no idea what to do with it all.
Or actually, fuck that. He does obviously.
He slides over the last few inches towards her, until they're almost on top of one another and he's got one hand at the nape of her neck and one on her jaw, thumb brushing her cheek bone. It's still not close enough, not nearly, so he guides her knee over until she's straddling him. His hands travel to her hips, helping her grind against him a little (he's totally hard already), not like she needs any help and just the fucking friction is enough to send shockwaves all the way to the ends of his fingers and toes. Her head is thrown back, making it easy for him to kiss and lick and suck hard at her shoulder and her pulse point and shit, she's probably going to have something to say about that later, but right now it's just making her liquid and pliant.
He needs to be inside her.
She seems to agree.
He starts tracing patterns with his fingertips under the hem of her dress, skimming it up, watching inch after inch of those gorgeous legs exposed and then dancing higher on her inner thighs, teasing across her center, while she's making little choked-off sounds and rolling her hips towards him, trying to get him to touch her where she wants. Pushing up and away from him a few inches, she starts working on his zipper and he lifts up his hips and helps her shove them and his boxers down around his knees. And then it's his turn to groan when her soft, warm hand closes around his cock and starts a slow glide up and down until he's forehead to forehead with her, breathing hard, and they're both looking down, focused on the tangle of hands and bodies.
"Noah, do you have condoms?" she whispers urgently in his ear and he has to close his eyes for a second because he is absolutely going to fuck Rachel Berry in his truck and it's a stone-cold fact that that's somewhere in the top five on his lifetime achievement list.
"Glove compartment," he manages to choke out. While she's leaning over to grab one, he moves his hand to her panties and starts maneuvering them down and this part shouldn't hard, because yeah working in the limited space is kind of awkward, but still this isn't exactly his first time. Somehow though, there's a tightness in his chest and a hint of a tremor in his hands and for the first time he lets himself admit that it's been kind of fucked up week, hell, a fucked up summer.
And she makes it all better, makes it bearable, has for months and he doesn't know why. (Shut up you stupid fuck. You know why. You know.)
She's smoothing the condom on and then grasps him with a couple of quick pumps and it feels great, but he's got have more. (Of course he fucking does.)
"Baby...Rachel...," he groans, grasping her hips and lining her up and then (fuck!) pulling her down on top of him in one stroke.
And she's hot and she's tight and she's riding him and in some corner of his brain he should be worrying that he's pushing up into her too hard or gripping her so tightly that he'll leave a mark, but right now he doesn't care, anymore than he cares about her heel digging into his calf or her fingers clutching onto his shoulder, his bicep, nails digging in. All that, it's totally irrelevant to the sensation of being buried up to the hilt in her or to the pursuit what they're frantically chasing together.
She's babbling something into his neck and he hears something like "God," and "Noah," (damn right, that feels good) and he's got his fingers between her legs working her clit in gentle rhythm that's a contrast and a counterpoint to the desperation of their thrusts. He's knows she's close, reads the tell-tale tremble in her thighs, the way she's starting to clench around him. He could totally get her off now, push her over the edge just by saying the right words, some combination of filthy and sexy and practiced, but all he's got is her name, over and over again and it's all right, it's enough for both of them.
*****
He's totally man enough to admit it, this part is good too, the part where he's got her sitting between his legs in the back of his pick-up, her back to his chest. And it's dark and quiet and he can't see her face which makes it easier when he tells her some shit about what this week's been like. (He has a feeling she knows most of it already, but whatever.)
"I like this," she says, lightly clasping one of his hands between her own. "You were always easy to talk to."
"We didn't talk much in high school."
"Sometimes we did," she counters.
"Not enough. You know. Things were always complicated with Finn." Could be a stupid fucking move, bringing up Hudson, only he wants to show her that she can talk about stuff without him being a complete shithead. You know, if she wants.
"We broke up, you know. In case you were wondering about the subtext to my conversation this afternoon with him."
"I sort of knew that," he says and slides a hand up her rib-cage, getting a little side-boob action. Because you know, duh.
She bats at his hand ineffectually, before leaning back into him and sighing. "I suppose what I mean is that it was an ugly break-up. Right before I left for NYU."
He comes back at the end of the summer, just for a weekend before he drives out to freshman orientation at Maryland and what the hell is wrong with him? There's no fucking point to driving by Berry's house. Not when she left for New York yesterday.
"I heard something about it." He runs his tongue over the back of his lip, remembering the taste of blood. "Just the bare bones, though."
He's packs his shit and he's got a couple hours to kill, so he heads over to Rutherford's to hang out and share a couple cold ones. But when he gets there, Matt meets him at the door, looking worried. "Hey man, maybe you should come back in an hour or so."
And then he hears Finn's voice from inside. "Is that Puckerman? Tell him to wait. He's gonna want to hear this."
He clears his throat. "Wanna tell me about it?"
She hesitates, saying finally, "I think we both had these idealized versions of one another that we wanted the other to fit. I had our future all mapped out and so did he and it was disappointing for us both to realize that they didn't match."
It's not complete bullshit, more like an understatement, which he knows because he has first hand knowledge of what Hudson's version of 'disappointment' looked like.
Finn comes out onto the stoop and he's not drunk, not anywhere near it but he definitely looks like he's been wrung out hard at some point in the last 24 hours. And he looks pissed. Really fucking pissed.
"You should be happy about this, fucking thrilled, probably. Rachel and I broke up. Figured it wouldn't be long until I saw you sniffing around."
There's an iron band around his chest that's making it hard to breath (feels like he's taken a hit already), but whatever, Puck's got better shit to do than giving Hudson the fight he seems to be angling for.
She's linking her fingers with his and squeezing so tightly that if her hands weren't like the size of a ten year old's, shit, it might hurt. "And that night, some things were said in the heat of the moment that I'm sure he didn't mean and probably I didn't come off all that well either."
"Left it a little late though, didn't you? She gone, she's fucking left...."
As he turns to go he can see Matt in the background, tugging at Finn's sleeve, telling him to shut up, but Finn either won't or can't. "Gonna be a big star. Selfish fucking bitch."
And that pretty much tears it. He turns back, and fuck, it's straight into Hudson's fist, which shouldn't be a surprise since it's not the first time the bastard has sucker punched him. But this time, he's hitting back and it's a little because since the two of them have been together he hasn't come near her. Hell, he's barely said a word to her. But mostly it's because Hudson's right, it's all too late. Why didn't this happen last year, hell last month? Now, she's gone.
She's so quiet now, he has to angle his head in to hear her voice. "I think what he wanted...he just...he just wanted me to stay. He brought me on a tour of OSU twice that summer. Finally he told me to choose and when I asked him if he wanted me to give up my dreams, he said that I was his dream. He asked me why he wasn't enough."
He's screaming back at Finn. "This is all on you, man! I never touched her. I never said a word to her that you couldn't have heard! But I'll tell you this. You were an idiot to think you could keep her here and an asshole for even trying!"
"Noah, do you think I'm horrible?"
"No baby, I don't." He rubs her shoulder comfortingly with the hand she's not holding.
They're both silent for a while after that, and it's kind of awesome how it's not awkward or anything. Unfortunately, he knows he's got to take her back home soon. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that her fathers aren't really going to be on board with her 'consoling' a friend all night. (Never mind that it's the best kind of consolation there is. Practically a mitzvah.)
Seriously, it fucking sucks that every time he's seen her in the last year, there's this stupid built-in time limit, and no guarantee that it isn't going to be years until he sees her again. Total bullshit, right?
(It's all translating in his head into man the fuck up.)
"Rach. I want to see you again. And I don't want to have to piss you off or have someone die to do it."
She twists, tilts her heads at him. "You do?" she says with this little hopeful note in her voice and it makes his grip on her tighten.
"Yeah," he says, not trusting his voice to anything else.
"Well," she replies and she's practically purring, "we'll have to make that happen then, won't we."
And she pulls his head down for a fucking hot kiss (only it's kind of ridiculous too, because neither of them can stop grinning).
*****
So that's settled.
Only it's not. Not really. Because when they start comparing their semester schedules it becomes clear that 'again' isn't going to happen until winter break, which obviously sucks. They also aren't leaving with any sort of labels. Whatever. Probably safer for both of them anyway. (A tiny part of him wonder what that means though, since clearly it had been important to her to lock Hudson and that St. Douche kid down.)
When he finally drops her off, he doubts she's going to mention him to her fathers in any sort of detail (in his experience that's a good thing) and he sure as hell isn't going to repeat her name to his mother. Crazy woman probably knows already though, Rachel's been on her radar since, like, birth.
Later that night, he's sitting around doing nothing, just staring at his calendar, which doesn't do shit to make four months go by faster.
What will make four months go by faster? He's on the road on his way back to Maryland when he finds her panties stuffed beneath the seat. She's still got his tee-shirt; he got her to admit she wears it to bed sometimes and as simple as that image is, it's total food for the spank-bank. And these? Even better. Oh, yeah. He is so keeping these.)
*****
The semester starts off good. He gets all the classes he wants, plus he's finally got a place off campus with a couple of friends. Animal House it ain't, they're all seniors and don't really have the time to screw around. Shit, they'll go to the bars and have a few, they even throw a party for game seven of the World Series (not that he gives a shit, the fucking Indians were out of it in August). But mostly it's just work and study and every few nights he'll spend a couple hours on the phone with Rachel.
It's not really until Halloween that it's driven home that he hasn't gotten laid since Rachel. (Actually also for that entire summer as well, but he had sort of assumed that's because the only girl hanging around the construction crew was Jeff's sister and you don't fuck with the sister of someone who habitually carries a nail gun.)
He's been dragged off to some party because one of his roommates has a thing going with the chick who's throwing it, and free beer is free beer as long as he doesn't have to wear a some stupid costume. Of course the bastard disappears with his girl within the first five minutes. And ten minutes after that he's surrounded by a slutty nurse, a slutty cheerleader (which after three years of on-again, off-again with San, he's sort of over) and a slutty school girl. And they're all making it clear that he can go home with whatever combination of them he chooses.
So shit, whatever this thing is with Rachel is, it hasn't really changed him. He's not a saint and he's sure as hell not some cardboard cut-out. He's still the guy who does first and thinks later. Still the guy who does what he wants when he wants. And what he wants to do right now is call Rachel because she's probably back from the concert she was singing at and then see if he can get her to take her clothes off over the phone for him again.
So, you know, that's what he does.
(On his way out, he does ask the school girl where she got her costume from though. Just for future reference.)
*****
He's been back home for a week, so looking back, he's kind of surprised his mother waited this long to bring her up.
"You look antsy."
He rolls his eyes. "Ma, I'm fine. I don't look antsy."
"You've barely touched your dinner. Don't you like your mother's cooking anymore?"
"It's good. No one heats up frozen lasagna like you."
She flicks his ear. "Smart mouth. You know, I ran into the Berrys at the supermarket. Apparently Rachel got back today."
"Yeah. Maybe. I don't know. You got something to say?"
"No, no. "
Then, three minutes later: "It's just that you mentioned that you were going out tonight."
"Mmm."
"So if you happen to see Rachel at any point while you're out, be sure to give her my best."
Like he said. Woman is totally bat-shit crazy. (She also reads him like a book.)
But really, is he twenty-two or is he twelve?
The feeling only intensifies thirty minutes later when he's standing on Rachel's doorstep with her dad staring at him through a partially opened door looking like A: he's never seen Puck before in his life, and B: he'd like to keep it that way.
He manages not to shift his weight uncomfortably. "Is Rachel at home?"
Dude doesn't blink. "Is she expecting you?"
Definitely, if a text reading 'can you come over right now?' means she expects him to commit three minor traffic violations in order to arrive in under ten minutes.
But he doesn't have to say anything because she's suddenly in the doorway with her daddy trailing after her. "This conversation isn't over young lady! Dad and I will be back from dinner in two hours and then we'll all sit down and try and talk this mess through."
"I think you've made your point very clear," she says with just a hint of irritation. "Daddy, Dad, you remember Noah, don't you?" she continues and Puck only has time to wave (Dad still doesn't look impressed) before she's grabbing his forearm and dragging him upstairs and into her room.
She flops down on the bed and lets out a little scream of frustration. He's on the bed next to her in a second asking softly, "Hey, what's wrong?" and wrapping an arm around her.
"It's not what's wrong, it's what's right, but they just refuse to see it!" she fumes. "Remember how I told you about the call from that production company?"
"Yeah, you met one of the partners during your internship, right?"
"Exactly! Well, she attended the fall senior showcase and the long and short of it is that they've offered me a small part in the revival of A Chorus Line! ON BROADWAY Noah!"
And then he's hugging her so tight he actually pulls her off the bed and swings her around. "Holy shit baby! That's amazing!" He plants a few kisses on her and that turns into a few more, but something is slowly working it's way through his brain. "Wait," he says, (part of him can't believe he's pulling away), "I'm not seeing the problem here."
Two red spots are burning high on her cheekbones. "Rehearsals start in January, Noah. This is a full-time commitment."
"Oh fuck," he says heavily, "You aren't going to be able to finish your last semester at NYU."
"Not right away," she says passionately, "but school will always be there. And I readily admit that Tricia isn't a huge role, and yes, she does get cut after the first number, but Noah, I get a solo. True, it's only three lines, but it's a solo. This is a huge deal and they don't understand."
"But you're going to do it? You did take the part, right?"
"Almost before she finished speaking," she admits.
"Well fuck, Rach, this is what you were born to do. And when you get your chance, you've got to grab it with both hands." (Fine, don't hit him over the head with it. It hasn't escaped his attention that there's a lesson somewhere in there for him too.)
Too much to think about right now, but he's left with a weird urge to try and solve her problems. Even so, he can't believe he's about to suggest this: "You, uh...you want me to talk to your dads?"
"That means a lot to me Noah. I'm more grateful for your support than I can say, but I can't think any purpose would be served by that. At some point, they'll have to bow to the inevitable. I just hope it doesn't take too long."
She looks up at him, flirts really, through her eyelashes and then she wets her lip with her tongue and yeah, just like that he's hard. "Right now I was thinking...Noah, I don't want you to think that my appreciation for you is based solely on your physical attributes...." She traces one hand along his bicep.
He's breathing a little harder. "But you want me to take your mind off it all?" He is so up for that. (Ha!)
Later, when the two of them are collapsed together in a sweaty heap on her bed, he'd be embarrassed about how quickly it goes down, but come on, it's not like it's surprising; months with just his hand for company are going to have an effect. And completely obviously she gets off, because he doesn't ever leave a girl hanging, much less his girl.
And you know, it kind of works out, because they end up having just enough time before her dads get home for him to learn something worth knowing. (You can bet your ass he pays attention to his education when it happens in the context of her pressing him up against her bedroom door and then sliding to her knees in front of him.)
Turns out that thing Hudson let slip in the locker room senior year, the one Puck broke Wilson's collarbone for in a scrimmage because the asshole wouldn't stop asking about it? Totally and mind-blowingly true. He is just never, never going to let this girl go. (And just so you know, he's virtually certain that only about 50% of that statement is coming from his dick.)