Puck Of All Trades [5/6]
Title: Puck Of All Trades
Rating: M, for language
Characters: Puck, Rachel, Finn, Kurt
Spoiler(s): Up to current aired US episodes.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I get nothing. Please don't sue.
Notes: Inspired by the HIMYM fic of similar design and an Esquire article.
Summary: Noah Puckerman has mastered the 75 skills it takes to be a man.
45) Break another man’s grip on his wrist.
Puck shoulders past Finn between third and fourth and Finn moves to shout an indignant remark, but his friend is already at the end of the hall and turning the corner, so Finn clamps his mouth shut and frowns instead, filing away the actions for a later confrontation.
“Finn!”
“Hey Rach-” Finn freezes mid-pivot, stumbling over his own two feet as he takes in the sight of Rachel, covered from head to toe in corn syrup, and Kurt, right on her heels, a bit of red dye on the front of his own designer shirt, obviously not the intended target but standing too close to the splash zone to get away scott free.
“Have you seen Noah?”
Rachel’s practically vibrating, from anxiousness or anger Finn can’t tell.
“He went that way.” Finn jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “What happened to-?”
“Thank you!”
Rachel makes three steps forward before Kurt is there and pulling her back, cutting off Rachel’s surely nail-biting remark by turning to Finn to command, “After him!”
“B-but…”
“Just go, Finn!”
Finn goes. He slips on a bit of slushy that had pooled on the floor, but recovers quickly and tears off down the path Puck had taken just seconds earlier, no longer questioning but catching the urgency in his step-brother’s voice and the tears brimming in Rachel’s eyes.
Puck is easy to find. Finn spots him holding Strando up against a locker somewhere near the gymnasium.
“Puck!” Finn hovers around the two. “What the hell are you doing?”
It’s obvious, though. Finn understands now. He takes the pieces of a slushied Rachel, a smug-looking football player, and a violent Puck and is able to put together a picture that makes sense.
“I’m going to knock the lights out of this bastard,” Puck hisses.
“You can’t.” Finn grasps Puck’s wrist and tries to pull him off. “You’re still on probation.”
Puck seems to let Finn’s words filter through his mind, but he shakes his head after a moment and says, “I don’t care,” and in one swift move Puck rotates his arm in Finn’s grip and breaks free before he reels back and cracks Strando across the jaw.
But Puck doesn’t go back to juvie.
He’s lucky.
(Or the school is seriously just that messed up).
Either way, Finn catches him as he’s exiting the principal’s office and tells him he needs to be more careful.
“Yeah,“ Puck merely nods. “Next time I gotta make sure Berry doesn’t realize it’s me so I don’t get another lecture about her stance against using violence as revenge.” He holds up his phone. “Over eighty text messages, dude. Proper grammar and everything.”
Puck shakes his head and walks off leaving a stunned Finn behind.
-
46) Tell a women’s dress size.
Rachel texts him during fifth period.
Emergency! I require your assistance, please. My blue pen has exploded on my blouse and skirt and I am stuck in the restroom in the ‘B‘ Hall. Can you possibly excuse yourself from English to procure an article of clothing from my locker?
English? Is that where he is?
Puck makes to get up, but another vibration from his phone sits him down again.
And do please ignore this if you are in the middle of a test or particularly invigorating lecture of your current required reading. I shall wait five minutes and if I don’t hear a reply I will venture that the aforementioned is taking place and will try Kurt. Otherwise, please do simply excuse yourself to use the restroom and do not just stand and walk out of the classroom without letting the teacher know.
Puck sighs and raises his hand and the teacher looks like she’s about to have a coronary when he properly excuses himself.
“Babe?” Puck knocks on the bathroom door a little while later. “It’s me.”
Rachel pokes her head out and flashes him a bright smile. “Noah! Thank you. I do regret pulling you out of class, but my wardrobe malfunction has caused me to become terribly self-conscious and I hadn’t wished to walk the halls in fear of running into anyone who might spot my see-through dilemma.”
“See-through?”
“Really not the time, Noah,” admonishes Rachel. “Do you have my clothes?”
“You didn’t have anything in your locker,” Puck informs her, “I think you used your only spare the other week when Strando slushied you.” He holds out a bag, “But I swung by the drama department and found a dress for you in their wardrobe closet.”
Rachel takes the bag of clothes hesitantly, but nods and disappears back into the restroom.
When she exits Puck is still there and he grins when he sees her in the slimming black dress he’d found.
“I was worried,” admits Rachel. “I’d thought you’d be more inclined to pick something more provocative.”
“Provocative?” repeats Puck, but shakes his head before Rachel can explain and plasters his grin back on as he points out, “Look! It’s even got an owl on it. Cool, huh? I figured you‘d like that.”
-
47) Recite one poem from memory.
Puck recites: “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.”
Sam blinks in confusion. “What does a poem have to do with this assignment?”
“Is that even considered a poem?” Finn asks.
“Either way it’s not very appropriate,” sneers Quinn.
“Or accurate.” Rachel informs them, “In reality, it was only presumed that Lizzie Borden stabbed her stepmother and father. She was actually acquitted. And, it is also said that the stepmother was stabbed nineteen times and her father eleven so even then-”
“Thank you,” Mr. Schue forcefully interrupts. “That’s quite enough for today.”
-
48) Remove a stain.
“Noah Elijah Puckerman!”
Sam chokes on a roll as he repeats, “Elijah?”
Puck’s face heats in embarrassment as the rest of the table of gleeks laugh and he turns to poke Rachel in the shoulder to hiss, “You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone my full name Rachel Barbara Ann Berry!”
Another bout of laughter and Rachel’s face turns bright red.
“Barbara Ann?” asks Quinn.
“I thought it was just Barbara,” says Mercedes. “Like Barbara Streisand. It‘s Barbara Ann?”
“The Beach Boys,” explains Rachel. “Daddy’s favorite band.”
“Forget that!” Kurt screeches as he plucks his bag off the cafeteria floor, turning it over to carefully inspect the underside and frowning as he takes in the grape corn syrup sticking to it. He snaps a glare at Puck. “You just bumped my bag into a pool of slushy! Your slushy.”
Puck blinks. “Sorry.”
“Simply apologizing will not do! This is my Armani weekender!”
“I’m really sorry?”
Kurt lets out a yell of frustration.
“Relax! Jeezus, I‘ll get it out.”
“It’s not that simple, Puck!”
“Of course it is.”
Puck snatches the bag and grabs a wad of paper towels from the lunch table and begins to blot the purple mess. When he’s successfully accomplished that, he rifles through his own backpack and pulls out a Tide pen and shakes it a bit before applying that too, alternating between blotting and bleaching and blowing hot breaths on it until the slushy-stain is just a faded wet spot.
“There.” Puck holds it out. “Satisfied?”
Blinking incredulously, Kurt nods and grabs the Tide pen and says, “I’m keeping this too, by the way.”
Puck merely shrugs and turns back to his previous conversation by humming under his breath, close to Rachel’s ear, “You got me rockin and a-rollin, rockin and a-reelin’ Barbara Ann…”
-
49) Say no.
“What?” Rachel, blouse half-off and skirt riding low on her hips, frowns. “You don’t want to…to… B-but I had thought-?”
“You thought wrong.” Puck pulls his wife-beater back over his head and shrugs back into his button-down. “Come on, lets go back down and watch a movie in the living room. Your fathers should be home any minute.” He makes to stand, but Rachel easily pulls him back down onto the bed. “Rach…”
“My father’s aren’t due back for another three hours, Noah. We have plenty of time.” She gives him a look. “If you don’t have protection then would it put your mind at ease to know that I am currently on the pill?”
“I’m not having sex with you Rachel.”
Rachel frowns. “You don’t want to?’
“Fuck yes I want to!” Puck counters. “I just can’t.”
“Why?” asks Rachel. “I’m ready.”
Puck shakes his head. “You may think you are; you may even feel you are, but you’re not.” He turns to take her hands in his and squeezes lightly. “I’m not pushing you into anything here, Rachel. I know you. I know you want to wait. I can wait too.”
“I just,” Rachel covers herself up, suddenly very embarrassed. “I-I thought…”
Puck cups her face gently and presses a soft, delicate kiss to her lips.
-
50) Fry an egg sunny-side up.
Rachel wakes up to the smell of breakfast and the sound of music.
She pauses at the top of the stairway and watches as Puck, dancing and humming around her kitchen, cracks an egg over a frying pan and readies a pot of coffee and a pitcher of ice water.
“Honey?”
Rachel jumps, startled, and spins dramatically on her heel to hiss, “Daddy!”
Leroy lifts a brow and simply informs her, “Noah stayed the night.”
“Daddy, we didn’t-!”
“I know,” Leroy interrupts, placing his hands on his daughter’s shoulders to placate her. “Dad and I came home last night and found you two curled around each other, over the covers, still wearing all articles of clothing.” He squeezes her shoulders lightly. “We’re not mad, Rachel, we trust you.”
Rachel blushes as she thinks of her earlier actions and ducks her head in shame, unable to meet her daddy’s eyes as she whispers her gratitude.
“And you know what?”
Rachel looks up questioningly and Leroy looks at her with a soft, knowing smile.
“We trust him too.”
-
51) Build a campfire.
“I remember this at the end of D2: The Mighty Ducks,” quips Sam cheerfully as he raises his marshmallow over the fire. “Should we sing Queen now?” He hums out the first verse of ‘We Are The Champions’ and waits for the others to join, but they just look on blankly and Sam ducks his head in embarrassment as Mercedes pats his arm sympathetically.
“Anyway,” says Mr. Schue, taking a seat on a log between Santana and Brittney, who are getting a bit too close for his comfort. “I know we all had our doubts about this little camping trip but, now that we’re actually out here and settled…”
“It’s been great,” gushes Rachel. “I’ve never been camping before. Being out in the wilderness, surrounded by Mother Nature and her wonderful woodland creatures… I saw an owl! I’ve never seen an owl before.”
“Maybe now that it’s graced your presence you can quit wearing it on your chest .” Kurt raises a perfectly-manicured brow. “Perhaps we could toss it in this lovely fire Puck has built for us?”
“Kurt!”
Pucks throws an arm around her shoulders. “That might not be a bad idea, Rach.”
Rachel frowns. “I thought you said you enjoyed my choice of dress.”
“Really?” asks Santana.
“Of course I do. But, you know what?” Puck wags his eyebrows at her and eyes the owl residing on her current shirt. “I really don’t mind you taking that off and throwing it in the fire… It is a bit hot out here, don‘t you think? And if you get too cold, I can keep you warm.”
Rachel blushes and Mr. Schue buries his face in his hands as he realizes that he probably picked the wrong couple to sit between.
-
52) Step into a job no one wants to do.
It’s not Sectionals or Regionals or even Nationals, but a lose is still a lose and, for whatever reason, they all blame Rachel.
Santana goes off on her when they finally make it back to their hotel room and it takes the combined efforts of Sam, Mike and Finn to hold her back from unleashing all the Lima Heights fury she’s spouting in Spanish.
Nobody’s defending her though. She stands on the other side of the room with this look on her face and she wrings her hands awkwardly as she stands there and just takes it and it’s pissing the fuck out of Puck because it’s not her fault.
“Knock it off!”
His bellow, the only voice screaming in English, reverberates around the suddenly silent room and all eyes turn to him as he pushes off the wall he’s leaning against and stands a little behind Rachel, grabbing her shoulder and squeezing softly.
“We didn’t fucking lose because of Rachel,” Puck snarls. “We lost because we sucked.”
“We didn’t suck,” Mr. Schue tries to assure them all. And Puck has to know why the hell he wasn’t speaking up to defend Rachel when Santana was attacking her. “We all did our very best and next time-”
“The same fucking thing will happen.”
“Puck-”
“No.” Puck interrupts. “I’m sick of this fucking bullshit and I don’t understand why you all are blaming Rachel on something that’s obviously on all of us.”
“How is this any of our faults?” Santana asks.
Quinn nods. “Yeah, Rachel is the one who sung solo.”
“She may have sung solo, but she wasn’t the only one out there.” Puck’s jaw ticks. “I know Hudson said during Sectionals sophomore year that we’re better when we’re loose, but we can’t be this loose. We don’t practice! We don’t take time to learn a song and perfect the choreography! We wait until it‘s a week until competition and we just go out there and perform. Where’s the effort? We can’t just expect to show up and win because we’ve got the heart. We have to fucking earn it.”
Mr. Schue stammers, “Th-that’s not true.”
“It is.” Kurt steps up suddenly, placing a hand on Rachel’s other shoulder. “This is just like Nationals last year in New York. We wrote those songs two days before competition. That’s why we lost, not because of Finn and Rachel’s kiss.” He looks around at all of them and nods. “I agree with Puck.”
Mr. Schue has no words and everybody just kind of stands there awkwardly in silence for a few moments until, finally, Santana shrugs off the hold on her and steps slowly up to Rachel and folds her arms over her chest.
“So… The judges are assholes. Don‘t know what hit them. Next time, with more practice, we‘ll win because your voice doesn’t totally suck. I like it, or whatever, and I’m sorry I got caught up in the moment, okay?”
Rachel beams up at her and Santana gives her a tiny smirk before she bounds toward the door, linking pinkies with Brittany on her way out.
-
53) Sometimes, kick some ass.
Sometimes? Please.
-
54) Break up a fight.
It’s the middle of glee rehearsal and they’re standing center stage in the auditorium and she’s yelling and pointing and flailing and making inane Streisand references and everybody else is just standing around because… Awkward…
“Why is she yelling at you?” Finn whispers.
Puck shrugs. “Hell if I know.”
“Make her stop,” says Finn.
“How?”
“I don’t know. Apologize?”
Puck nods and takes three steps forward and catches Rachel’s lips, cutting her off mid-rant.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her when they break away for breath. “I’m an ass.”
“You are not,” says Rachel, because she hates when he insults himself. She steps back and looks at him, brow raising suspiciously. “And you have no idea why I’m yelling at you, do you?”
“You stopped, though.“ Puck shrugs. “So it must’ve not been that important.”
“No.” Rachel shakes her head. “I suppose not.”
-
55) Point to north at any time.
“Which way is north?” asks Finn.
Puck scratches the back of his head and asks, “New York City is north, right?”
Kurt nods affirmative when Finn looks at him blankly. “Northeast, technically.”
“Okay, then wherever she is,” Puck points at Rachel. “That’s north.”
-
56) Create a play-list in which ten seemingly random songs provide a secret message to one person.
“Is that Madonna?” Rachel grins as she snatches the music player from his hand. “You have Madonna on here?” He reaches for it back, but she swats his hand away and runs her thumb up the screen to scroll through the songs. “How odd…” She looks to him and holds the device out and points out, “These are all songs about New York.”
“Yeah. Point?” Puck swipes his iPod back and stuffs it deep into the pocket of his jeans. “They’re good songs, okay?”
“They are,” agrees Rachel. “But why do you have them carefully composed into a play-list?” He says nothing and she scoots closer, placing an arm on his bicep. “Noah?”
“Shit… Look, it’s research, okay?”
“Whatever for?”
“You,” says Puck. “When you got all pissed at me the other day because I couldn’t figure out that stupid Central Park reference you were making, I realized I didn’t know shit about the city. And, you know, I figured if I was gunna help you take New York by the balls, I gotta know a thing or two before I can follow through.”
Rachel blinks. “You're going to help me take New York?”
“By the balls, babe.” Puck nods.
“Oh Noah…”
-
57) Explain what a light year is.
“Pearl Jam.”
“Heh. Funny, but I don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“The joke.”
“What joke?”
Artie stops and looks up from his textbook. “I asked you to tell me what a light year is and you told me Pearl Jam.”
Puck gives him a confused look. “Light Years is a Pearl Jam song.”
-
58) Avoid boredom.
“Hey Berry?” Poke. “Rachel?” Poke. “Rach?” Poke. “Rach?” Poke. “Babe!”
“What, Noah!”
“Wanna make out?”
-
59) Write a thank-you note.
An NYU acceptance letter and attached post-it note with a sloppily, shyly scrawled ‘thanks’ falls out of her locker and Rachel immediately rushes to the choir room to jump into Puck’s arms and pepper kisses all over his face, much to the amusement and confusion of the other gleeks.
“You did it!” she shouts, happy tears in her eyes. “I knew you could do it Noah!”
Puck simply nods and hugs her a bit tighter in response.
Rating: M, for language
Characters: Puck, Rachel, Finn, Kurt
Spoiler(s): Up to current aired US episodes.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I get nothing. Please don't sue.
Notes: Inspired by the HIMYM fic of similar design and an Esquire article.
Summary: Noah Puckerman has mastered the 75 skills it takes to be a man.
45) Break another man’s grip on his wrist.
Puck shoulders past Finn between third and fourth and Finn moves to shout an indignant remark, but his friend is already at the end of the hall and turning the corner, so Finn clamps his mouth shut and frowns instead, filing away the actions for a later confrontation.
“Finn!”
“Hey Rach-” Finn freezes mid-pivot, stumbling over his own two feet as he takes in the sight of Rachel, covered from head to toe in corn syrup, and Kurt, right on her heels, a bit of red dye on the front of his own designer shirt, obviously not the intended target but standing too close to the splash zone to get away scott free.
“Have you seen Noah?”
Rachel’s practically vibrating, from anxiousness or anger Finn can’t tell.
“He went that way.” Finn jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “What happened to-?”
“Thank you!”
Rachel makes three steps forward before Kurt is there and pulling her back, cutting off Rachel’s surely nail-biting remark by turning to Finn to command, “After him!”
“B-but…”
“Just go, Finn!”
Finn goes. He slips on a bit of slushy that had pooled on the floor, but recovers quickly and tears off down the path Puck had taken just seconds earlier, no longer questioning but catching the urgency in his step-brother’s voice and the tears brimming in Rachel’s eyes.
Puck is easy to find. Finn spots him holding Strando up against a locker somewhere near the gymnasium.
“Puck!” Finn hovers around the two. “What the hell are you doing?”
It’s obvious, though. Finn understands now. He takes the pieces of a slushied Rachel, a smug-looking football player, and a violent Puck and is able to put together a picture that makes sense.
“I’m going to knock the lights out of this bastard,” Puck hisses.
“You can’t.” Finn grasps Puck’s wrist and tries to pull him off. “You’re still on probation.”
Puck seems to let Finn’s words filter through his mind, but he shakes his head after a moment and says, “I don’t care,” and in one swift move Puck rotates his arm in Finn’s grip and breaks free before he reels back and cracks Strando across the jaw.
But Puck doesn’t go back to juvie.
He’s lucky.
(Or the school is seriously just that messed up).
Either way, Finn catches him as he’s exiting the principal’s office and tells him he needs to be more careful.
“Yeah,“ Puck merely nods. “Next time I gotta make sure Berry doesn’t realize it’s me so I don’t get another lecture about her stance against using violence as revenge.” He holds up his phone. “Over eighty text messages, dude. Proper grammar and everything.”
Puck shakes his head and walks off leaving a stunned Finn behind.
-
46) Tell a women’s dress size.
Rachel texts him during fifth period.
Emergency! I require your assistance, please. My blue pen has exploded on my blouse and skirt and I am stuck in the restroom in the ‘B‘ Hall. Can you possibly excuse yourself from English to procure an article of clothing from my locker?
English? Is that where he is?
Puck makes to get up, but another vibration from his phone sits him down again.
And do please ignore this if you are in the middle of a test or particularly invigorating lecture of your current required reading. I shall wait five minutes and if I don’t hear a reply I will venture that the aforementioned is taking place and will try Kurt. Otherwise, please do simply excuse yourself to use the restroom and do not just stand and walk out of the classroom without letting the teacher know.
Puck sighs and raises his hand and the teacher looks like she’s about to have a coronary when he properly excuses himself.
“Babe?” Puck knocks on the bathroom door a little while later. “It’s me.”
Rachel pokes her head out and flashes him a bright smile. “Noah! Thank you. I do regret pulling you out of class, but my wardrobe malfunction has caused me to become terribly self-conscious and I hadn’t wished to walk the halls in fear of running into anyone who might spot my see-through dilemma.”
“See-through?”
“Really not the time, Noah,” admonishes Rachel. “Do you have my clothes?”
“You didn’t have anything in your locker,” Puck informs her, “I think you used your only spare the other week when Strando slushied you.” He holds out a bag, “But I swung by the drama department and found a dress for you in their wardrobe closet.”
Rachel takes the bag of clothes hesitantly, but nods and disappears back into the restroom.
When she exits Puck is still there and he grins when he sees her in the slimming black dress he’d found.
“I was worried,” admits Rachel. “I’d thought you’d be more inclined to pick something more provocative.”
“Provocative?” repeats Puck, but shakes his head before Rachel can explain and plasters his grin back on as he points out, “Look! It’s even got an owl on it. Cool, huh? I figured you‘d like that.”
-
47) Recite one poem from memory.
Puck recites: “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.”
Sam blinks in confusion. “What does a poem have to do with this assignment?”
“Is that even considered a poem?” Finn asks.
“Either way it’s not very appropriate,” sneers Quinn.
“Or accurate.” Rachel informs them, “In reality, it was only presumed that Lizzie Borden stabbed her stepmother and father. She was actually acquitted. And, it is also said that the stepmother was stabbed nineteen times and her father eleven so even then-”
“Thank you,” Mr. Schue forcefully interrupts. “That’s quite enough for today.”
-
48) Remove a stain.
“Noah Elijah Puckerman!”
Sam chokes on a roll as he repeats, “Elijah?”
Puck’s face heats in embarrassment as the rest of the table of gleeks laugh and he turns to poke Rachel in the shoulder to hiss, “You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone my full name Rachel Barbara Ann Berry!”
Another bout of laughter and Rachel’s face turns bright red.
“Barbara Ann?” asks Quinn.
“I thought it was just Barbara,” says Mercedes. “Like Barbara Streisand. It‘s Barbara Ann?”
“The Beach Boys,” explains Rachel. “Daddy’s favorite band.”
“Forget that!” Kurt screeches as he plucks his bag off the cafeteria floor, turning it over to carefully inspect the underside and frowning as he takes in the grape corn syrup sticking to it. He snaps a glare at Puck. “You just bumped my bag into a pool of slushy! Your slushy.”
Puck blinks. “Sorry.”
“Simply apologizing will not do! This is my Armani weekender!”
“I’m really sorry?”
Kurt lets out a yell of frustration.
“Relax! Jeezus, I‘ll get it out.”
“It’s not that simple, Puck!”
“Of course it is.”
Puck snatches the bag and grabs a wad of paper towels from the lunch table and begins to blot the purple mess. When he’s successfully accomplished that, he rifles through his own backpack and pulls out a Tide pen and shakes it a bit before applying that too, alternating between blotting and bleaching and blowing hot breaths on it until the slushy-stain is just a faded wet spot.
“There.” Puck holds it out. “Satisfied?”
Blinking incredulously, Kurt nods and grabs the Tide pen and says, “I’m keeping this too, by the way.”
Puck merely shrugs and turns back to his previous conversation by humming under his breath, close to Rachel’s ear, “You got me rockin and a-rollin, rockin and a-reelin’ Barbara Ann…”
-
49) Say no.
“What?” Rachel, blouse half-off and skirt riding low on her hips, frowns. “You don’t want to…to… B-but I had thought-?”
“You thought wrong.” Puck pulls his wife-beater back over his head and shrugs back into his button-down. “Come on, lets go back down and watch a movie in the living room. Your fathers should be home any minute.” He makes to stand, but Rachel easily pulls him back down onto the bed. “Rach…”
“My father’s aren’t due back for another three hours, Noah. We have plenty of time.” She gives him a look. “If you don’t have protection then would it put your mind at ease to know that I am currently on the pill?”
“I’m not having sex with you Rachel.”
Rachel frowns. “You don’t want to?’
“Fuck yes I want to!” Puck counters. “I just can’t.”
“Why?” asks Rachel. “I’m ready.”
Puck shakes his head. “You may think you are; you may even feel you are, but you’re not.” He turns to take her hands in his and squeezes lightly. “I’m not pushing you into anything here, Rachel. I know you. I know you want to wait. I can wait too.”
“I just,” Rachel covers herself up, suddenly very embarrassed. “I-I thought…”
Puck cups her face gently and presses a soft, delicate kiss to her lips.
-
50) Fry an egg sunny-side up.
Rachel wakes up to the smell of breakfast and the sound of music.
She pauses at the top of the stairway and watches as Puck, dancing and humming around her kitchen, cracks an egg over a frying pan and readies a pot of coffee and a pitcher of ice water.
“Honey?”
Rachel jumps, startled, and spins dramatically on her heel to hiss, “Daddy!”
Leroy lifts a brow and simply informs her, “Noah stayed the night.”
“Daddy, we didn’t-!”
“I know,” Leroy interrupts, placing his hands on his daughter’s shoulders to placate her. “Dad and I came home last night and found you two curled around each other, over the covers, still wearing all articles of clothing.” He squeezes her shoulders lightly. “We’re not mad, Rachel, we trust you.”
Rachel blushes as she thinks of her earlier actions and ducks her head in shame, unable to meet her daddy’s eyes as she whispers her gratitude.
“And you know what?”
Rachel looks up questioningly and Leroy looks at her with a soft, knowing smile.
“We trust him too.”
-
51) Build a campfire.
“I remember this at the end of D2: The Mighty Ducks,” quips Sam cheerfully as he raises his marshmallow over the fire. “Should we sing Queen now?” He hums out the first verse of ‘We Are The Champions’ and waits for the others to join, but they just look on blankly and Sam ducks his head in embarrassment as Mercedes pats his arm sympathetically.
“Anyway,” says Mr. Schue, taking a seat on a log between Santana and Brittney, who are getting a bit too close for his comfort. “I know we all had our doubts about this little camping trip but, now that we’re actually out here and settled…”
“It’s been great,” gushes Rachel. “I’ve never been camping before. Being out in the wilderness, surrounded by Mother Nature and her wonderful woodland creatures… I saw an owl! I’ve never seen an owl before.”
“Maybe now that it’s graced your presence you can quit wearing it on your chest .” Kurt raises a perfectly-manicured brow. “Perhaps we could toss it in this lovely fire Puck has built for us?”
“Kurt!”
Pucks throws an arm around her shoulders. “That might not be a bad idea, Rach.”
Rachel frowns. “I thought you said you enjoyed my choice of dress.”
“Really?” asks Santana.
“Of course I do. But, you know what?” Puck wags his eyebrows at her and eyes the owl residing on her current shirt. “I really don’t mind you taking that off and throwing it in the fire… It is a bit hot out here, don‘t you think? And if you get too cold, I can keep you warm.”
Rachel blushes and Mr. Schue buries his face in his hands as he realizes that he probably picked the wrong couple to sit between.
-
52) Step into a job no one wants to do.
It’s not Sectionals or Regionals or even Nationals, but a lose is still a lose and, for whatever reason, they all blame Rachel.
Santana goes off on her when they finally make it back to their hotel room and it takes the combined efforts of Sam, Mike and Finn to hold her back from unleashing all the Lima Heights fury she’s spouting in Spanish.
Nobody’s defending her though. She stands on the other side of the room with this look on her face and she wrings her hands awkwardly as she stands there and just takes it and it’s pissing the fuck out of Puck because it’s not her fault.
“Knock it off!”
His bellow, the only voice screaming in English, reverberates around the suddenly silent room and all eyes turn to him as he pushes off the wall he’s leaning against and stands a little behind Rachel, grabbing her shoulder and squeezing softly.
“We didn’t fucking lose because of Rachel,” Puck snarls. “We lost because we sucked.”
“We didn’t suck,” Mr. Schue tries to assure them all. And Puck has to know why the hell he wasn’t speaking up to defend Rachel when Santana was attacking her. “We all did our very best and next time-”
“The same fucking thing will happen.”
“Puck-”
“No.” Puck interrupts. “I’m sick of this fucking bullshit and I don’t understand why you all are blaming Rachel on something that’s obviously on all of us.”
“How is this any of our faults?” Santana asks.
Quinn nods. “Yeah, Rachel is the one who sung solo.”
“She may have sung solo, but she wasn’t the only one out there.” Puck’s jaw ticks. “I know Hudson said during Sectionals sophomore year that we’re better when we’re loose, but we can’t be this loose. We don’t practice! We don’t take time to learn a song and perfect the choreography! We wait until it‘s a week until competition and we just go out there and perform. Where’s the effort? We can’t just expect to show up and win because we’ve got the heart. We have to fucking earn it.”
Mr. Schue stammers, “Th-that’s not true.”
“It is.” Kurt steps up suddenly, placing a hand on Rachel’s other shoulder. “This is just like Nationals last year in New York. We wrote those songs two days before competition. That’s why we lost, not because of Finn and Rachel’s kiss.” He looks around at all of them and nods. “I agree with Puck.”
Mr. Schue has no words and everybody just kind of stands there awkwardly in silence for a few moments until, finally, Santana shrugs off the hold on her and steps slowly up to Rachel and folds her arms over her chest.
“So… The judges are assholes. Don‘t know what hit them. Next time, with more practice, we‘ll win because your voice doesn’t totally suck. I like it, or whatever, and I’m sorry I got caught up in the moment, okay?”
Rachel beams up at her and Santana gives her a tiny smirk before she bounds toward the door, linking pinkies with Brittany on her way out.
-
53) Sometimes, kick some ass.
Sometimes? Please.
-
54) Break up a fight.
It’s the middle of glee rehearsal and they’re standing center stage in the auditorium and she’s yelling and pointing and flailing and making inane Streisand references and everybody else is just standing around because… Awkward…
“Why is she yelling at you?” Finn whispers.
Puck shrugs. “Hell if I know.”
“Make her stop,” says Finn.
“How?”
“I don’t know. Apologize?”
Puck nods and takes three steps forward and catches Rachel’s lips, cutting her off mid-rant.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her when they break away for breath. “I’m an ass.”
“You are not,” says Rachel, because she hates when he insults himself. She steps back and looks at him, brow raising suspiciously. “And you have no idea why I’m yelling at you, do you?”
“You stopped, though.“ Puck shrugs. “So it must’ve not been that important.”
“No.” Rachel shakes her head. “I suppose not.”
-
55) Point to north at any time.
“Which way is north?” asks Finn.
Puck scratches the back of his head and asks, “New York City is north, right?”
Kurt nods affirmative when Finn looks at him blankly. “Northeast, technically.”
“Okay, then wherever she is,” Puck points at Rachel. “That’s north.”
-
56) Create a play-list in which ten seemingly random songs provide a secret message to one person.
“Is that Madonna?” Rachel grins as she snatches the music player from his hand. “You have Madonna on here?” He reaches for it back, but she swats his hand away and runs her thumb up the screen to scroll through the songs. “How odd…” She looks to him and holds the device out and points out, “These are all songs about New York.”
“Yeah. Point?” Puck swipes his iPod back and stuffs it deep into the pocket of his jeans. “They’re good songs, okay?”
“They are,” agrees Rachel. “But why do you have them carefully composed into a play-list?” He says nothing and she scoots closer, placing an arm on his bicep. “Noah?”
“Shit… Look, it’s research, okay?”
“Whatever for?”
“You,” says Puck. “When you got all pissed at me the other day because I couldn’t figure out that stupid Central Park reference you were making, I realized I didn’t know shit about the city. And, you know, I figured if I was gunna help you take New York by the balls, I gotta know a thing or two before I can follow through.”
Rachel blinks. “You're going to help me take New York?”
“By the balls, babe.” Puck nods.
“Oh Noah…”
-
57) Explain what a light year is.
“Pearl Jam.”
“Heh. Funny, but I don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“The joke.”
“What joke?”
Artie stops and looks up from his textbook. “I asked you to tell me what a light year is and you told me Pearl Jam.”
Puck gives him a confused look. “Light Years is a Pearl Jam song.”
-
58) Avoid boredom.
“Hey Berry?” Poke. “Rachel?” Poke. “Rach?” Poke. “Rach?” Poke. “Babe!”
“What, Noah!”
“Wanna make out?”
-
59) Write a thank-you note.
An NYU acceptance letter and attached post-it note with a sloppily, shyly scrawled ‘thanks’ falls out of her locker and Rachel immediately rushes to the choir room to jump into Puck’s arms and pepper kisses all over his face, much to the amusement and confusion of the other gleeks.
“You did it!” she shouts, happy tears in her eyes. “I knew you could do it Noah!”
Puck simply nods and hugs her a bit tighter in response.