Glee Fic: Enough - R (2/3)
“Aaron.”
“Noah.” He’s actually not that drunk. Usually he can’t get out Puck’s full name (and it’s only two syllables, so it’s not like it’s that fuckin’ hard).
Puck lifts Rachel up off the couch and sits down in her spot then pulls her back down to sit on his lap, kissing her on the neck, just below her jaw. Yeah, he’s kinda shoving his relationship with Rachel in his brother’s face, but dude needs to know his place. Rachel may be Aaron’s best friend, she may be the one he goes to when shit gets bad, but she’s Puck’s wife and Puck’s best friend too. And if Aaron needs a little reminding every once in a while, Puck’s got no problem doing that.
“So Quinn’s being a bitch again, huh?”
“Yeah.” It takes Aaron a minute to pull his eyes away from Rachel’s legs. (Can’t really blame him for that. Rachel’s legs have always been solid fuckin’ gold.) “She wants me to sign away my rights to Beth, so Finn can be legally recognized as her father, since he’s her real dad and all.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.” He sighs. Aaron might not be crazy about how Beth made it into the world or who her mom is, but Puck knows he’d do anything for her. All this back and forth, antagonistic shit with Quinn must be wearin’ him out. “Apparently, having two dads is confusing for her, and detrimental to her development or...whatever.”
“Bullshit!”
Puck lifts his eyebrows and shoots a look at Aaron, who has an identical look on his face. “Baby?”
Her hand moves from resting on his shoulder to cupping his neck, her fingers running over the short hairs on his head and she takes a deep breath and says, “I apologize for my coarse language, but the notion that having two fathers in some way sets a child up for failure later in life is completely ridiculous, not to mention scientifically unfounded. My fathers were excellent role models. And though it would have certainly been nice to have a mother in my teen years, when I had questions about all of the changes I was going through, I wanted for nothing. I was raised in a home full of love. And that’s far better than what many people get.”
Aaron looks away, and Puck rolls his eyes. Of course he’s gonna have to explain this to her.
It’s pretty simple math, but for some reason Rachel’s never gotten it.
Noah loves Rachel. Rachel loves Noah. Aaron loves Rachel. Quinn loves Aaron. Aaron and Quinn had a daughter together. Aaron still loves Rachel. Quinn’s pissed off and turns into a vindictive bitch whenever anyone so much as mentions Rachel’s name.
And Finn’s oblivious to everything.
Aaron knew shit about being a dad when Beth was born (not his fault, since their dad is such an awesomely fucked up role model), so when he got his time with her, Puck and Rachel helped him out and made it into a group parenting thing. And since Beth’s a Puckerman, it took her about zero seconds to fall crazy in love with Rachel. Ever since she could form sentences, it’s been Auntie Rachel this and Auntie Rachel that and it pisses Quinn off, so for years she’s been trying to turn Beth against Rachel. Hasn’t worked, though. Beth still wants to be a Broadway star, just like her favorite person in the whole world.
“That’s the point, babe. Quinn’s pissed off that we spend so much time with Beth.”
He sees the understanding dawn in her eyes and she says, “You mean she’s angry I spend so much time with Beth.”
Even with the heated tone in her voice, he can see the hurt in her eyes and he hates this shit. He hates reminding her that there are people who still make it their life’s mission to treat her like crap. “You’re a better mom to her kid than she is. She feels threatened by you.”
He’s not about to say that other thing out loud, that Quinn’s pissed that even having Aaron’s kid didn’t make him love her more than Rachel. Or at all.
She huffs. It’s adorable as fuck and so Rachel, and the corners of his mouth twinge. “That’s incredibly petty of her. Trying to force Aaron to give up parental rights because her daughter might like me more? Aaron...you have to fight her on this. Don’t let her bully you into it. Noah and I will help you in any way we can, won’t we?”
He shrugs. “Yeah. Course.”
She smiles and kisses him, like she’s proud of his answer (not like he was gonna say anything else), and hops off his lap when the tea kettle starts to scream. She starts moving around in the kitchen and Puck and Aaron just sit there in silence, because Puck’s still a little ticked off that he isn’t having sex with his wife and Aaron’s a little ticked off about Beth and Quinn and, probably, the fact that he isn’t having sex with Puck’s wife either.
They used to be a lot closer. They never finished each other sentences or anything creepy like that, but with all the crap their dad put the family through, they ended up spending most of their time together as kids. At first they tried to spend more time at temple and at the JCC, but their ma got tired of the whispers and the stares pretty quickly, so after that they really only went when Nana Connie made them. Their ma kept hoping something would happen to some other family that would take the spotlight off them, but the Lima Jewish community is kinda small, so that was a little like hoping for Elton John not to be into dudes. Pretty damn pointless.
And then Rachel and her dads moved to town.
There were still whispers about his family (the pointing was a pretty big tipoff), but most of the whispers now were about Rachel and her two dads. The stuff he overheard was usually pretty tame - like about how sweet they all were, and how well-mannered and talented Rachel was - but there were a few people who insisted on being assholes, saying the Berrys were “unnatural” and “against God”. And that shit was just not cool, ‘cause even after his ma told Mr. and Mr. Berry about his deadbeat dad five minutes after meeting them, they still treated her the same way, and not as though she had some disease or something, like most of the temple had when their dad left them. They were nice to her, and his ma deserved to have some people who were nice to her, so who gave a rat’s ass if they were two dudes?
Well, John Goldstein apparently, ‘cause the idiot started mouthing off about the Berrys the day they first showed up at temple, calling them “a virus”. Rachel had been walking towards the playground, probably to introduce herself (they’d all seen her, standing there with her dads and his mom and Nana Connie, but they hadn’t actually met yet), when Goldstein opened his big fat mouth. When she heard him, she stopped and stood there in the middle of the lawn, her hands hanging down at her sides and her big, sad eyes staring down at the ground, and that made Puck want to beat in the kid’s face even more.
Which is kinda what he did.
To be fair, Puck did give him a warning first. Told him if he didn’t shut his mouth, he’d do it for him. And then Goldstein started spouting off all this bullshit about how gay people didn’t deserve to live and Aaron was just standing there behind him, next to the slide, not saying anything to back him up, and Puck found he couldn’t really control the way his hands made themselves into fists.
When some of the parents finally pulled them off each other, Goldstein looked a lot worse off than he did, which made Puck feel pretty damn satisfied, but he cringed when he saw his ma storming over. He knew she’d freak out over his ruined clothes and when she got there she pulled him aside and started giving him a lecture. Normally he’d just take it, but his ma kept asking why he couldn’t be better behaved, like Aaron, and that just made him mad.
So he interrupted her and told her that Goldstein was going on and on about how Rachel and her dads shouldn’t be there and about how gay people were bad and that couldn’t be right because the Berrys were being so nice to her, and that even when Puck asked him to stop, he wouldn’t. And that Goldstein had totally hit him first, so he was really just defending himself. (Which was true.)
His ma got this look in her eye then and she started to smooth down his shirt, pulling pieces of stray playground mulch out of his front pocket. She didn’t say much, just sort of tried to straighten his clothes out as much as she could, mumbling under her breath her gratitude that if he had to get in a fight, at least it had happened after services. Aaron came over then and she asked them both if they could manage not to get into any more trouble in the next few minutes, while she finished talking to Rachel’s dads, and they shrugged. She sighed, braced her hands on her back to support her belly (Becca was about two and a half weeks from being born) and said something in Yiddish under her breath. And when she turned and walked away, Puck saw Rachel standing about twenty feet away, looking right at him.
When their eyes met she started to walk toward him, the red ribbon in her hair fluttering, her hands clasped in front of her. She had on this little blue and white dress and those shiny white little girl shoes without a scuff on them and when she stopped in front of them, she gave Aaron a little smile and a nod before she turned her eyes to him and gave him the biggest, most beautiful smile he’d ever seen.
He was half in love with her before she ever opened her mouth.
Hi. I’m Rachel Barbra Berry, and I’m going to be a star one day.
I’m Noah Puckerman, and I don’t know what I’m gonna be.
Well, whatever you grow up to be, I’m sure it’ll be something amazing.
She kissed him on the cheek and told him thank you and just kept smiling that big smile at him, and he knew then he was a goner.
He’d be in love with Rachel Berry for the rest of his life.
Part 3 here: smartalli.livejournal.com/26716.html