I'm Sure You'd Remind Me (If You Had To)
Title: I'm Sure You'd Remind Me (If You Had To)
Chapter: 1/1
Warning: None.
Character: Puck/Rachel
Summary: Fictable prompt #21 - Life.
Word Count: 9,792
Disclaimer: Don't own.
If she had any interest in boys at all, she'd probably be in love with him.
That's her first thought.
The beginning part of that statement will change over the years, but the ending will always be the same.
... ... ...
He takes her hand once, behind her back, when mean, old Mr. Jacoby yells at them at temple for doing something she didn't even know was wrong.
There are tears in her eyes and she clenches her teeth, and then his hand is warm over hers and that's all she can think about, so she stops crying.
... ... ...
He tells her she has cooties and makes an 'x' with his index fingers and laughs with the other boys when she stomps her foot and fists her hands on her hips and tells him in no uncertain terms that she does not have cooties.
She tells her dads on him and they just laugh and seem to think it's funny and ask her if Noah has pulled her hair. Their smiles are conspiratorial when she insists that he has and that she doesn't like it one bit.
Noah kisses her on the cheek behind a tree at Davey Lowenstein's seventh birthday party and her skin tingles all the way home.
... ... ...
"You can't just do that!"
"I can too!"
"You're so stupid."
"I'm not stupid, I just hate this game!"
He gets frustrated with her and throws the basketball as hard as he can into the pool, and it makes a terribly loud sound and throws water everywhere.
"Your mom will yell at you for that," she states matter-of-factly.
He takes a step towards her and she knows he's trying to intimidate her. "Only if you tell."
She pushes him backwards into the pool and doesn't even get into trouble for it.
... ... ...
His dad leaves and Noah stops being nice to her even some of the time.
... ... ...
"Stop pushing!" she shrieks, and she's close to tears. She can't help it. She hates this, the way no one seems to care about her at all or even notice she's there.
Noah budges into the cafeteria line so he's right in front of her, and there's suddenly a whole lot more room around her, so she decides against yelling at him for jumping the line.
... ... ...
"Remember that time you kissed me?" she asks once, when they're practically alone at the JCC. Their parents have signed them up for babysitter's training, even though neither of them are very interested in it at all.
"Nope."
"I do," she says.
"Shut up."
"You kissed me on the cheek. I remember it."
"Shut up," he growls. "God."
She watches him wipe his palms on his pants and bounce his leg up and down like there are a million other places for a twelve year old boy to be on a Tuesday afternoon after school.
It's funny how, from the side, he sometimes looks like the boy who used to drop Skittles into her hand at temple when no one was looking.
"Why did you do it?" she asks quietly after a few moments.
He sighs, but doesn't look at her. "I dunno. Wanted to. And it was a million years ago, so shut up about it."
She doesn't mention it again, but when she waves to him from her father's car as they pull away, she sees the little smile on his lips.
... ... ...
She kisses him at his bar mitzvah, but she doesn't mean to. She goes to kiss his cheek and he turns his head at the last second and her lips land on his for a moment before she gasps and pulls away.
So that's how her first kiss is a mistake.
... ... ...
He kisses her at her bat mitzvah, takes her face in both his hands and holds it a little too tightly, and presses his lips to hers for a few moments before he pulls away and smiles at her.
So she decides that's her first kiss.
... ... ...
He pushes a note into her palm one day in the hallway, but won't look at her, and that's not exactly so strange. She feels like everyone's staring, wondering why he, the popular boy, is giving her, the nerd, notes. They're not paying any attention to her, which is the most normal thing about this situation, so she tucks the note into her bag and waits until she's home that night to read it.
The words 'don't tell' in his messy printing stare back at her, and she almost thinks she's heartbroken.
... ... ...
He tries to talk to her at temple one day when his mom is talking to the rabbi and he gets bored and walks away. Rachel watches him do it.
Looking back, it's the first time she realizes she's a second choice.
She turns her back as he approaches, puts her nose in the air a little bit, and taps her little gold ballet flat on the floor, impatiently waiting for her fathers to pull her along and tell her it's time to leave. She's pleading with them in her head, hoping they'll pick up on the fact that she wants to go home. She's got songs to practice and boys to avoid.
"Hey." He touches her elbow and she pulls it away. Not roughly, though, because she won't cause a scene. "What?"
"Nothing. I just don't want to speak to you," she says, her back still to him. She's standing with a table in front of her, playing nervously with the table cloth as she tries to be as mean to him as he's been to her.
"Why?"
"No reason," she says curtly, turning her shoulder when he tries to stand beside her. The truth is she finds him very cute, and looking at him will start to break down her resolve. "I think your mother wants you."
"Rachel," he says, and she detects a whine in his voice, but he really should have thought of that before he kissed her and regretted it.
Twice, maybe.
Her father waves her over just in time for her to avoid the rest of whatever conversation Noah is trying to have with her, and she walks away without saying goodbye.
... ... ...
He grabs her one night during the summer when they're at a barbecue and no one's looking, kisses her differently than he did that other time. His lips move gently against hers until she kisses him back, and his hand is around her wrist as she leans back against the side of the house they're at.
"Why did you do that?" she asks, looking into his eyes once he's pulled away.
He shrugs his shoulder. "Want to."
She notices the lack of past tense, smiles, and rests her head against his shoulder until he walks away a few minutes later.
... ... ...
He starts dating Santana Lopez the summer before freshman year. When she asks him about it ("Why her?") he rolls his eyes and looks at her like she's the most naive girl in the world, then walks away without really giving an answer.
She overhears Jacob saying he heard from Davey that Puck and Santana slept together, and she clues into the fact that she's got a crush on a boy who doesn't want her.
It'll be the first of many.
... ... ...
He sits down next to her one day at the JCC when she's supposed to be leading a music lesson but the younger kids are just playing and she can't find it in her to care.
"You're mad at me," he states, and she thinks it's at least nice that he's picked up on that.
"Why did you say you want to kiss me, then start dating her?"
"Fuck, Rach," he groans. He gets up and walks away, and the door slams behind her, and not only does she think it was wholly inappropriate for him to curse like that, but also, the least he could do was give her an honest answer.
He doesn't, however, have to say that sex has a lot (maybe everything) to do with it.
Try as she may, she can't make herself stop wanting him, even if he is too shallow to be with a girl he likes but who won't sleep with him.
... ... ...
Their parents arrange for him to walk her home from school when he stays after for football and she stays after to use the music room. Their schedules are coordinated so she doesn't have to walk home alone.
It's no secret she's got some kind of target on her back. She's bitter over the fact that if he'd just admit he's kind of almost a friend to her, people would probably leave her alone. Then again, it's his girlfriend who usually starts the tormenting. Pathetic as it is, she thinks as long as he doesn't join in, she can handle just about anything.
"Why are you always so quiet?" he asks abruptly one day. It's true. She is always quiet.
It's because all the thing she wants to say have to do with the two of them, and history has shown those questions don't always go over so well. She doesn't feel like arguing with him or giving him reason to ignore her any more than he already does.
Truth be known, she likes just walking home with him in silence. He always has his hands stuffed in his pockets and kicks stones on the sidewalk, and she always feels like she doesn't want to walk too quickly.
"I'm not."
"Rach, you practically spent our whole childhood talking my ear off," he says, smirks at her when she looks his way.
She shrugs her shoulder lazily, hooks her thumbs through the straps of her backpack. "I just never really know what to say to you, I guess."
It's the truth. He doesn't respond. He watches her walk up the walkway to her house, then continues on to his own.
... ... ...
One day, they're walking together, and she's heard about this week's very public breakup with Santana. Apparently the girl said something about his family and he called her a bitch and ended it right there in the middle of the cafeteria. Rachel doesn't eat in there, so she's not sure on the specifics.
About halfway to her neighbourhood, he sighs and looks at her. "Do you remember my dad?" he asks, like he just wants to know her answer, not anything else she might have to say that could related to that; just yes or no.
"Not really," she admits quietly.
"Yeah," he mumbles. "Me neither."
She wants to hold his hand but it's in his pocket, so she settles on running her hand down his back just once before crossing her arms over her chest. The rest of their walk is quiet. He walks her to the door this time instead of just waiting at the sidewalk.
... ... ...
She knows Finn Hudson is friends with Noah, but she's never actually talked to him, and judging by the looks she gets from Noah when he sees her talking to Finn in the hall, that's partly because her oldest friend (because that's what he is, even if he doesn't want to admit it) didn't want them talking.
She's old enough to make her own choices and speak with whomever she wants to speak with. She was before, too, it's just that no one wanted to talk to her. Now she's got people who might be her friends, and one of those happens to be Finn, and she really, really likes him.
It takes about a week and two duets for her to have a crush on him. He kisses her even though he has a girlfriend, and she knows it's wrong, but she doesn't really care about any of that until he realizes it, too, and then she cries, because this, her and him, is just really, really stupid.
Noah has a car now, and daddy got a new job with shorter hours that keeps him closer to home and allows him to pick her up from school. When she's waiting for him, there are dried tears on her cheeks and Noah walks out of the school on his way to his truck.
"What's wrong?" he asks, brow furrowed. She can't tell if it's annoyed or protective.
She figures that if anyone will listen to her, it's him, and that if anyone will understand Finn, it's him.
"Finn kissed me."
He says nothing, just stares at her for a minute and walks away.
She wants to know why he doesn't have more of a reaction than that.
... ... ...
Their attempt at dating is half-hearted at best. They understand one another better than anyone might believe, and she knows that's part of the problem.
They're probably too young for the kind of relationship they could have if they let themselves.
When they break up she's not surprised, and when she realizes the whole thing has been about Finn and Quinn, it hurts more than it should.
Underneath it all, she's still just the same girl she was at 13, wanting him to want her.
... ... ...
She pieces things together and begins to understand.
... ... ...
Finn breaks her heart like maybe she always knew he would, and Noah is preoccupied with Quinn, as he should be, and she starts dating Jesse, which is scary and exciting, since he's older and just...captivating.
He transfers schools and Noah gives her a look across the room like he doesn't approve.
She'd say it's really none of his business, but it probably is, somehow.
... ... ...
He tries to kiss her. She almost lets him.
Halfway through working on the arrangement of her song, she stops abruptly and refuses to meet his eyes as she asks, "are you mad at me?"
"For what?"
She shrugs and looks up from her lap to see that he's genuinely confused. "Anything."
"No," he answers, and somehow she knows he's not lying.
... ... ...
After Finn calls her a slut in front of the entire glee club and Jesse accuses her of breaking his heart, Noah passes her in the hall and nonchalantly throws over his shoulder at her, "still not mad."
It's the first thing she's really smiled at since she revealed her video.
... ... ...
He starts the trend, gets everyone sticking up for her, and she loves him for that.
... ... ...
"I never liked that Jesse guy," he tells her needlessly.
She laughs and he drops a hat onto her head as they prepare to take the stage for their funk number.
"I know," she says. She tries to take the hat off, but he stops her.
"'S'hot," he says.
He glances around and sees that no one is looking, and though he's supposed to be dating Mercedes or Quinn or Santana or whoever it is this week, he presses his lips against hers for a second and she's too shocked when he walks away to say anything about it.
... ... ...
He kisses her again, when he hears about her mom. She remembers being a child and the rest of the kids teasing her about her family situation, and him being the only one who really understood how she actually came to be.
She's in her red dress in the parking lot, waiting for her dads, and Noah comes up and grabs her elbow.
"C'mon," he says, pulling her gently towards his truck. Once they're inside and she's got her bag on her lap (that glass is inside and she doesn't want it to break) he keeps his eyes on the road as he speaks. "Your mom, huh?"
She just nods. She doesn't know what to say or what he wants to hear. He doesn't push the issue.
He curves his hand around the back of her neck before she goes to get out of his truck, pulls her over to him as he leans in. They meet in the middle and apparently he doesn't care that her dads could be watching from the windows.
"You should really stop doing that," she whispers, forehead pressed against his.
He just shakes his head, opens his eyes, and watches her as she gets out.
... ... ...
She congratulates him when his baby is born. He just nods and walks away.
She thinks there's something tragically poetic about this boy giving his baby away to her mother. Really, she should have seen it coming.
... ... ...
She starts dating Finn, but she still sees Noah only a few times over the course of the summer. She and Finn like to be alone, and Finn and Noah do things Rachel has no interest in, so their time with the common denominator (or so everyone would think) is limited.
One time during the middle of August, they're at temple and he walks up to her, hands in his pockets and eyes on the floor.
"You mad at me?"
She straightens his tie because it's a mess and she knows he's always hated wearing one (she's always loved them on him), and forces him to look at her as she says, "for what?"
"Anything?"
She shakes her head. "No."
He smiles a little and she's glad he knows when she's telling the truth.
... ... ...
She thought he was smart enough not to get himself arrested. He's been devious all his life, and yes, he's committed some petty crimes she doesn't approve of, and made some mistakes, but this is something different all together.
He's in juvie for three days until the charges are dropped, but she knows his mother, and he probably would have been safer behind bars because Mrs. Puckerman is going to be downright irate with him.
Still, Rachel goes over to the house once she hears he's out. She thinks it's safe to assume that she's the only one Mrs. Puckerman would allow in the house, since she's known this family practically her whole life.
She's more than a little surprised when he answers the door. Hannah is sitting on the couch, and as Rachel steps into the house, he tells the girl to go up to her room. She does so without being asked twice. Rachel has to wonder how much yelling has gone on in this household in the past couple days.
Rachel watches him sit back on the sofa, and she shouldn't be nervous. The fact that he's invited her in at all lets her know that he's okay with her questions. He obviously knows she's going to ask them.
"Noah, what happened?" she asks, because she knows there's no way he just did this incredibly stupid thing for no reason.
"Noth..."
"Don't lie to me," she insists harshly. "Don't."
He rolls his eyes, groans and puts his head in his hands. "Shit's tight, okay? At home. Money. Mom's working like crazy and...It's bad. I just wanted to help."
He's so dense.
"Getting arrested doesn't do that."
"I know!"
She sits down next to him and turns to him a little bit. "Why don't you just get a job? I'll help you. Last year when Finn..." Her voice trails and he looks at her from the corner of his eye. "I helped him."
"Then there's no one to take care of Hannah when mom's working. That's why I fuckin'...Try'n keep up, alright?" he says bitterly.
She doesn't like his tone, and she doesn't like his attitude. If he's going to be a jerk, she's walking out the door right now.
"Don't lash out at the one person who's concerned about you."
He looks her in the eye for the first time since she arrived, nods, and she thinks he might actually understand that she's right. No one else is coming around and asking how he is or why he did it or what's wrong. "And I'll still help you."
"Rachel."
"I can babysit," she states, hands on hips, and he furrows his brow.
"Finn'll love that," he mumbles, shaking his head.
"Finn will understand. I'm trying to be less selfish. This is an excellent place to start." She pulls her notebook out of her bag, and the newspaper she brought just in case this was the way this whole meeting would go, and sits down next to him again. "So, what skills do you have, other than petty crime and immense stupidity?"
He smirks at her like he's thankful (she knows he's not going to say the words), puts his feet up on the coffee table and leans back against the sofa. "I play guitar, too. Don't forget that."
She laughs at him and then promptly starts in on a lecture on responsibility that he doesn't even interrupt, because he probably knows he needs to hear it.
... ... ...
He's working as a bus boy at a coffee shop owned by one of her father's friends, and she spends two nights a week and all day Saturday looking after his sister.
Finn doesn't ask questions. Actually, he tells her he loves her for being so good to his best friend.
She thinks maybe Noah was her best friend first, but she doesn't say anything about that.
... ... ...
When she and Finn break up, it's Noah there to pick up the pieces. He brings her a decaf Earl Grey tea sweetened with honey, a box of tissues, and sits down on her bed, telling her he's prepared for an afternoon of her crying.
That's the thing. She hasn't cried at all.
Everyone thinks Finn broke up with her. In truth, it was the other way around.
Noah insists he'll keep that secret, even if he doesn't really understand why it is one. She explains that she's protecting Finn's reputation, so he won't be the guy who got dumped by the glee nerd.
Noah rolls his eyes. He might be the only one, but that's apparently just not how he sees her.
She sips her tea and he tells her about his 'promotion' to waiter, and how he made $50 in tips the other day.
She's not lying when she says she's proud of him. He slips his arm around her shoulder.
... ... ...
She doesn't really know why his mother starts referring to her as his girlfriend. She marches into his room one day after she hears his mother talking to someone at Temple about 'Noah's girlfriend, Rachel.'
"I just wanted her to, like, be proud of me," he says after she's (almost) finished ranting.
"So you did that by lying?" she yells, throwing her hands in the air.
"No!" he shouts back. "By giving her what she wants."
It takes her a second to fully comprehend that, then before she can stop herself, she puts her hands on his shoulders where he sits on the end of his bed, leans down, and kisses him.
It's really the first time she's been the one to kiss him in a long, long time, and she doesn't know what it means, so she leaves before either of them can question it.
... ... ...
They don't look one another in the eye for almost a week, until he catches up with her before they go on stage for one of their performances. She doesn't know whose idea it was to change the choreography so they're together and Mike and Santana are together, but judging by the look in his eye he may not exactly be an innocent party.
"You kissed me."
"I don't want to talk about this right now," she whispers, turning her back on him.
He puts his hand on his hip and leans down to speak into her ear. "Why are you whispering?"
"Noah."
Their cue comes and they make their way onto the stage. He holds her hand a little tighter than he has to.
... ... ...
She loses her virginity to him one night in the summer after they come back from losing at Nationals.
They've never dated. They aren't dating. She doesn't think he wants to. But they're friends. Actually, they're friends and everyone knows it now.
His mother still believes Rachel is his girlfriend, even though they've both told her repeatedly that no, they aren't together. She doesn't seem to want to believe them. At least she's stopped telling people.
It happens in July, when their friends all go camping and he has to work and she doesn't want to go if he's not. Of course, that's not what she says. Most of the glee club still just barely tolerates her, despite her efforts to win them over. She's actually listening to Noah now and she's stopped caring so much about what they think of her.
He comes over after he's done his shift. Her dad is away on a business trip, and Daddy's recovering from the stomach flu, so she doesn't want to leave him alone. He's asleep when Noah arrives, though, so they just go to her room and close the door, because her fathers are liberal. Very liberal.
She doesn't know how it happens, exactly. They go from talking about movies, to talking about sex in movies, to talking about sex. Then they're kissing and his shirt is off and she loves the way he feels, hard between her legs.
He's surprised she's a virgin. He wants to stop when she tells him, but she holds onto him tightly and tells him the truth.
"I honestly don't know who else I'd want to do this with," she admits quietly, eyes boring into his. He closes them for a second. "Noah, I want you."
She doesn't feel any different after, she just thinks their relationship is probably a lot more complicated than they'd like to admit.
... ... ...
He doesn't talk to her for two days, and she's not surprised or hurt by it. She knows him too well for any of that. He walks into her backyard one day when she's home alone, reading one of her guilty pleasure summer reads (there's nothing wrong with Gossip Girl) and sits at the edge of her lounge chair, hip brushing against her thighs.
"We should..."
He looks so good in his sleeveless shirt and board shorts that she cuts him off with the first thing that comes to mind.
"Have sex again?"
He stares at her for a moment, like he wants to be sure this is real. "I was gonna say talk, but your way works, too."
She laughs and he leans over to kiss her. They don't actually have sex again, but really, her suggesting it sets them up for how things will be for the rest of the summer.
They date quietly, do things together, sleep together, and try not to let on that any of this is happening. Mostly because his mother tends to run away with the idea of the two of them together.
Also because they really don't know how to navigate a relationship.
... ... ...
School starts and they stop. It's not a conversation they have or something they agree upon, but their little arrangement just stops once things get too busy for the both of them. He's taking extra classes to make up for ones he skipped and failed, and she's working at the dance studio for spending money and because it looks good on college applications.
Sam and Quinn break up and Rachel starts spending a little time with him, but it's nothing serious. They don't even kiss. They just talk about music and sometimes he plays guitar, and his family loves her, so she has dinner there some nights when her dads work late or are out of town on business.
Noah is jealous, even if he won't say anything.
They all go to a Halloween party at Santana's house. Noah dresses as Ari Gold (his favourite Jew, apparently) and Rachel is Jasmine from Aladdin. All the glee club girls are dressed as different Disney princesses. She wanted to be Belle, since the costume would be less skin-baring, but Santana was having none of it, so here she is in a very revealing costume that she secretly absolutely loves.
Noah pulls her into a dark hallway and slides his hand over the smooth skin of her stomach, left bare by her costume. He's looking down at her body like he hasn't seen her naked countless times.
"What's with you and Sam?" he asks abruptly, holding her hip too hard.
"Nothing. We're friends."
"Like you and I are friends?" He sounds far more bitter than he has a right to be, and the look she gives him must explain that. "Fuck. Sorry."
"I'm not going to date him," she says quietly, eyes fixed on the floor. She's not entirely sure when she started playing with his tie, but that's what's occupying her hands.
"You didn't date me."
She looks up at him and shakes her head a little. "Yes, I did."
He sighs. "Yeah. I know."
She leans up and kisses him quickly, and he lets her walk away far too easily for her liking.
... ... ...
It's like that all year, the two of them not together, but not totally not together, either.
He defends her when Mr. Schue tries to give her a lecture about fair play. She defends him when someone asks why he always gets out of Saturday rehearsals and why he can't switch his shifts.
They still do that thing where they kiss after the big moments. She finds him after he sticks up for her, takes his face between her hands and kisses him. She stops into the café for tea one day and there's no one around, so he kisses her quickly before she leaves.
It's strange, how something can be too much and not enough, all at the same time.
... ... ...
He's the first person she tells when she finds out she's gotten into NYU.
He comes to see her with his acceptance to Syracuse.
"We'll both be in New York State," he muses as he lays back on her bed.
She can't help herself. She straddles his hips and leans down and kisses him.
Not because this is the start of something, but because it could be the end.
... ... ...
She goes to see him once when she wants to get away from the craziness (and lack of friends) of the city.
She thinks it's strange that they don't sleep together the whole time she's there. Sure, he's got a roommate (Jared, a very nice boy from Florida), but they sleep in the same bed and he doesn't even try to touch her inappropriately.
To be honest, she was kind of hoping for it.
"So, I've kinda...I mean, there's a girl," he says on her last day there.
She doesn't know why she tries to smile, because he'll just see through it anyway, and she knows he's not surprised when she doesn't say anything about it, doesn't ask questions about the girl, and gets onto her bus back to New York after giving him nothing more than a hug.
... ... ...
Maybe she just always thought he was going to end up being the one.
... ... ...
She goes on a few dates with a boy she meets in her film studies class. He's nice, and he buys her dinners and makes her laugh and never really gets too far beneath the surface.
She doesn't sleep with him, even when her body wants her to.
She likes that there's one part of her only Noah has ever had.
... ... ...
By holiday break, Noah has broken up with Carmen. He surprises Rachel in New York and they rent a car and drive back to Ohio together, which is not at all part of the itinerary she sent her fathers, but she knows they'll understand.
She sleeps with him in a hotel in Pennsylvania after they turn out the lights and he whispers in her ear how much he's missed her.
It's strange to hear him speak like that, and she thinks it's out of character for a moment.
Then she stops caring and lets him push her pajama pants down off her hips.
... ... ...
She comes home for the summer and hears through the grapevine that he's dropped out of Syracuse.
She's downright pissed off.
The first time she sees him since the holiday break, she's marching up the walkway to his house and he's on the porch, shirtless and playing guitar.
Now is not the time for a reminder of how attractive he is.
He stops her midway through her rant about him dropping out and how he's ruining his life and 'what have we been working towards?'
The 'we' just slipped out.
"Who the fuck told you I dropped out?" he asks angrily. "I switched programs. Maybe don't fuckin' judge so quick."
"Well!" she shouts, throwing her arms up. "It does sound like you."
He stares at her for a moment, like he can't believe she just said that, and once she thinks about it she realizes why he's mad. Before she can apologize to him for it, he laughs bitterly and shakes his head.
"Thanks," he says.
That's all he says, though. He goes into the house and the turn of the lock echoes loudly in her ears.
... ... ...
His mother lets her in two weeks later, when she's sick of not talking to him. She misses him. She loves summers with him.
She slips into his room and he's half asleep, but he smiles lazily when he sees her, like he's too tired to remember that he should be mad at her. She sits down next to him on the bed, slides her hand over his bare stomach, and watches him blink the sleep away.
"I didn't mean it," she admits, and his hand covers hers.
"I know. Someone else would have, though."
It might not make a ton of sense, but she knows what he means by that. He tugs her wrist until she's laying parallel to him, kisses her hair and falls back to sleep.
She doesn't know exactly why they push one another so hard. She thinks it means something that they always pull one another back to the middle again.
... ... ...
"We're getting old," she says one night towards the end of summer. They're driving back from Columbus after visiting Finn and Quinn.
No, that wasn't awkward at all.
"Nah."
"Finn and Quinn are living together. Tina and Mike are engaged," she argues. "We're getting old."
"You think they could tell we're fucking?" he asks, and she sighs and glares at him from the passenger seat, because she hates it when he says it like that. "Sorry. That we're 'copulating'?"
He laughs hysterically. She hates that word more than the 'f' word.
"Probably not," she answers honestly once he's calmed himself. "They've never called us on it."
They both seem to be doing the math in their heads, trying to figure out just how long this has been going on.
... ... ...
"I had a date tonight," she tells him. They're back at school. It's terrible to not have the option of seeing him every day. She's trying to ignore that, though.
And yes, maybe there's a small part of her that's trying to make him jealous right now.
"Why would you tell me that?" he asks angrily.
"I don't know. It's just something that happened. I thought we told each other things."
"I'm not playing this game, Rachel, okay? You fuckin' wanna be with some theater douche, go for it. Don't give me the details."
Okay, she knows him well enough to know that anger equals jealousy.
"He's not in the theater, not that that's the point," she tells him. "I don't want to be with anyone else, Noah." There's a pause. She wants him to figure it out, but she knows he won't. "I just can't be with you, can I?"
He doesn't say anything, and they change the subject and basically pretend she never said it.
... ... ...
Don't be with anyone else, then.
She gets the text sometime around two in the morning, smiles to herself and doesn't even think she's mad at him for waking her up.
Go to bed, Noah.
Her phone rings seconds later, and she's smiling as she answers. She's so glad she has her own place and no roommate this year.
"I'm in bed," he tells her, "thinking about this shit."
She turns onto her side and tucks her hand under her cheek. "Really?"
"Well, you don't have to be, like, happy about that."
She giggles and she doesn't care what he says. She's going to be happy about this regardless.
... ... ...
She convinces him to come to New York for a week before they go to Lima for the holidays. Their break is three weeks long and their parents no longer (never really did, actually) question them spending time together.
She meets him at the bus station, and he drops his duffel and holds her instead, and she will not let her heart get ahead of her.
Except that it has been since she was probably way too young to even realize it.
That night, he sees her tattoo for the first time. It's silly, basically, but she wanted something that represented her love of music, so there's a delicate little treble clef on her rib cage. He traces it with his fingertip when he's got her shirt and bra off. It's like he's mesmerized by it. It's a little ticklish, so she puts her hand over his.
"When'd you get that?" he asks, looking into her eyes.
"September. Do you like it?" she asks. Judging by the smile on his face and the way he hasn't stop touching it since he saw it, she knows the answer.
"Yeah," he croaks out. He clears his throat and she tries not to laugh. "'S'hot."
He basically worships her. It feels different, this time. Sex has always been amazing, but this is different. It feels more like making love, even though she hates that term. She doesn't say anything to him about it, in part because she doesn't want him to tell her that's not what this is, and in part because she doesn't want him to stop anything he's doing right now.
... ... ...
They spend their entire week in New York acting like the couple they've never been, and when they get to Lima, she expects things to go back to how they always were; secret, quiet, subtle.
But the first party they go to, he pulls her onto his lap as he plays poker. The next day he holds her hand in front of his mother. He sits next to her at temple and she puts her hand on his knee. He spends the night at her house and her dads don't say anything about it.
New Year's Eve, they're attached at the hip, and he kisses her so many times before midnight, she doesn't even care about the ball dropping.
He still kisses her almost inappropriately when the clock turns to 12:00, and their friends don't seem surprised in the slightest.
... ... ...
She convinces him to spend one last night in New York with her before going back to school.
It doesn't take much convincing at all.
They lay in her bed, her curled against him and him playing with the ends of her hair. He has a hard time sleeping in the city, and she has a hard time sleeping without him. It's a catch-22. She wants to take advantage of their time together, but she wants to sleep like a baby, too.
It's nearing four in the morning when she wakes up and finds him on his side, looking at her. His lids are heavy and his hand is curved over her hip.
Maybe it's the sleepiness, but she can't stop herself from talking.
"It's in your best interest to fall in love with me."
"Why?" He smiles a little bit. She's not entirely surprised that he's not running for the door.
She pushes herself closer to him and tangles their legs together. "Because I'm beginning to feel like I'll always love you back."
He kisses her and she can't stop him, even though he's catching an early bus and she's exhausted. She wants to believe this is his way of giving in.
Then he murmurs, "love you," into the skin of her neck as he moves against her.
She has a hard time not falling apart just from the words.
... ... ...
She changes her name in his phone to read MY GIRLFRIEND. He laughs when she hands his phone back to him, kisses her cheek and tells her she's, "fucking crazy."
She shrugs her shoulder. It's not like it's the first time he's ever called her that. She knows he mostly doesn't mean it.
... ... ...
He transfers to NYU, and the fact that she's not surprised at all is probably a shock to all their friends. None of them seem to understand how important this relationship is, how serious. Or just how long it's been going on for. (Forever, perhaps, and she likes the sound of that.)
He moves the last of his things into her apartment on the third Saturday of June, and it's her that freaks out about them living together.
"I'm...I do...There are things you don't know!" she says, voice panicked as he stands there, infuriatingly calm, and sips from his beer.
"Such as?" he prods.
She's almost positive he's just going to use this to make fun of her. She doesn't care.
"I...I leave the bathroom door open when I shower in case there's a fire, so I don't burn my hand on the doorknob," she says. He blinks. She's sure he thinks she's fit for a straight jacket. "I drink orange juice from the carton. My closet is so organized it would scare you. I dance around in my underwear and sock feet and pretend I can moonwalk. Noah, I don't want you to see all that!"
He's chuckling as he sets his beer down on the counter and rests his hands on her hips. He kisses her quickly and tries to clam her down. "Means I can join you in the shower easily," he says. "You know I love shower sex." Of course, he's going to make her blush. Jerk. "Pretty sure drinking from the same orange juice carton's just about the most tame way we've ever shared saliva."
"Noah."
"I don't give a shit about your closet, to be honest." She rolls her eyes and looks up at him. "And please, please promise me you'll dance around in your underwear for me."
She leans her head against his chest and fists his shirt in her hands at his back. "Why do you even like me?"
She feels his laughter beneath her cheek and pulls away. "You kinda forced me into it."
She'd argue that if it wasn't at least partly true. He's never complained one way or the other.
... ... ...
They hold hands at Mike and Tina's wedding. Rachel wears a bridesmaid dress she knows he loves, and he's in a three piece suit, all black, and she's almost positive this whole wedding thing is overrated, but she still wants one. Eventually.
They're at the head table, and she's sipping champagne as he whispers in her ear. She knows their friends are staring, but she doesn't care. She knows that to everyone else it's strange that they're together, sharing an apartment and a life they keep rather quiet.
No one needs to know he keeps his things in the hall closet so as not to ruin her closet's organization, or that the first time he came home and she had Kanye West blaring as she slid across the kitchen floor in her sock feet, panties and tank top, he just laughed and wrapped his arms around her and dropped his pants around his ankles.
She certainly isn't about to mention what happened after that.
"You guys are, like, really...together?" Brittany asks, like she's missed an entire chapter of some story she wasn't ever really interested in anyway.
Rachel, just a little drunk, drapes herself over his lap and looks at their old friends.
"Noah and I are completely in love and have been since we were four years old."
Noah laughs and shakes his head, kisses her cheek. "Not quite, babe."
"Whatever," she says, looking away from him again. "He loves me and we're totally adorable."
Everyone laughs when he takes her champagne glass from her and pushes it as far away as he can. When she pulls him onto the dance floor, she knows everyone at the table is talking about them, but she doesn't care. One of her favourite country songs comes on, she holds him a little tighter.
"I think I've loved you that long," she says.
"Liar," he says, pulling her closer. "Finn."
"Well..." He laughs and kisses her. "That's your fault, too." He gives her a look and she giggles. That's mostly the champagne. "If you'd just admitted..."
"Whatever," he chuckles. "I was kinda dumb."
She stops moving and leans up on her toes to kiss him. "I won't hold it against you."
Smiling, he pulls her close so his lips are next to her ear. "Thanks, baby."
... ... ...
She graduates a week before he does. He sits with her dads and his mom and sister, and they're both really, really thankful that their families have splurged on hotel rooms rather than staying with them in their tiny apartment that's barely big enough for the two of them.
They go to dinner, the six of them, and Noah's mother makes a point of telling everyone the 'kids' are together. Nothing glaringly obvious, just things like, "My son and his girlfriend would like to sit next to one another," or, "My son's girlfriend is vegan."
The woman has wanted this as long as Rachel has been around. She supposes she can understand how exciting this is.
Her dads are just as thrilled, they just do it quietly.
"I think your mother would take me to Kleinfeld tomorrow if I let her," Rachel muses as they get into bed the night after his graduation ceremony.
"Yeah," he says, pulling her into his arms.
He's not spooked. Sometimes the reminders are nice that he loves her that much.
... ... ...
A year later, he's working as a physio assistant and she's in an Off-Off-Broadway show and they're still living in the same apartment, just a little more comfortably, she starts to think they're ready for something else.
When Finn and Quinn call to announce their engagement, Rachel starts wondering when it'll be their turn.
"You know, you can ask me if you want to," she says as they watch television. She doesn't elaborate, hoping he'll just get it.
"Yeah, I know," he says, and when she looks up at him, he's watching the television, but there's a little grin on his lips.
It's probably a bad thing, though, because she'll be on edge until she's wearing a ring.
... ... ...
She's barely waking up one morning when she feels him tugging at her hand, then something cold is on her finger. She blinks away the sleep and sees him laying on his side with a black ring box in one hand and her hand in his other. He sees that she's awake and kisses her palm.
"There you go," he says.
She smiles, doesn't even look at the ring before she pushes herself closer to him and kisses him.
He doesn't need to ask the question because she doesn't need to hear it and they both already know her answer anyway.
... ... ...
She knows he's happy when she insists she doesn't want a big wedding. To be honest, she just wants a simple white dress, their families and maybe a couple close friends, and a dinner somewhere.
"I love you for that shit," he says seriously when she outlines her perfect day with him. "Let's go to Mexico."
"Honeymoon?"
"No," he says, shaking his head. "For the whole thing."
She bites her lip, sits herself down on his lap and loves the way his hand instinctively goes to the inside of her thigh. (She won't lie and say she can resist him ever.)
"Make it Hawaii and you've got a deal."
... ... ...
His mother is her maid of honour. Her father is his best man. Their ceremony is small and she wears a knee-length white dress, he, a pair of light grey pants and white button down shirt, untucked.
They go back to their suite and pours him a glass of some Hawaiian beer he's fallen in love with as he unbuttons his shirt and takes it upon himself to unzip her dress.
"Perfect," he says against her shoulder.
She's not sure if he means her or the ceremony, but he keeps kissing her and she's too distracted to try and decide.
... ... ...
She tells him she's late on a Wednesday when they're 26. He gets a pregnancy test from the CVS down the street from their apartment and she spins her wedding ring on her finger until he returns. She thinks she's stupid for not going with him, but he told her to stay put and try not to lose her mind while he was gone.
That's a little more difficult than it should be, really.
They wait together on the end of the bed while three minutes ticks down on his cellphone's stopwatch. They don't talk about how this is unplanned and definitely not something they've ever put a timeline on. Kids, yes. They want those. They just haven't talked about when, or how much money they'll have or need, or if they'll finally move out of this tiny one-bedroom and into something bigger and nicer.
His phone chirps and she steps into the bathroom.
Her heart falls when she sees that she's not pregnant.
"Oh," he says when she shows him the test. "Oh." He grabs her, pulls her against him. "Okay. We'll...I mean, shit, Rach. We can...try?"
She couldn't love him more right now than she already does. She has this thought often but really, right now, with him somehow reading her mind on the matter, she thinks they're perfect together in every way.
"I want to," she admits, since she's been thinking about it for at least two hours and already decided on it before he even came home and she mentioned anything to him about potential babies. "Do you want to?"
He laughs quietly, kisses her hair, and nods. "Yeah."
He's never really been a man of many words. He chose the right one here.
... ... ...
Stella is three days old when Rachel wakes up to wailing in the middle of the night and tries to move, only to find that her body is still not entirely up to it.
"I got her," Noah says, running his hand through her hair before getting up from the bed and crossing the room to pick up the baby from her crib. Rachel watches from her place in bed as he murmurs to the baby and holds her close to his bare chest like they've learned she loves. "She's hungry, I think."
Rachel sits up against the headboard as he passes the baby to her before laying down on their bed again, propping himself up on his elbow.
"She's just like you, you know," he tells her, like it's a given and their daughter isn't just three days old. Rachel gives him a doubtful look. "Demanding, loud, stubborn, has me wrapped around her damn finger."
Rachel laughs and looks over at him while he plays idly with one of Stella's delicate little wisps of hair. "She'll probably marry a hoodlum just like I did," she says.
"Hmm."
He has this look - he's had it since they were kids - when there's something he wants to say to her but he doesn't really want to say it. She's had a lot of fun over the years trying to figure out what it is he's not telling her. She can usually figure it out very quickly.
"Lucky boy," she murmurs quietly. He pushes himself up so he can kiss her again, the way he always does when she guesses right. "Go back to sleep. I'll put her down again when she's done."
"It's alright," he says, voice thick with sleep, biting back a yawn.
He's not kidding about that 'wrapped around his finger' stuff. If Stella is awake, he wants to be awake with her.
Rachel lays the baby down between them after he dozes off, wakes up in the morning when she hears him speaking quietly to their daughter.
She thinks she did pretty well for herself.
Chapter: 1/1
Warning: None.
Character: Puck/Rachel
Summary: Fictable prompt #21 - Life.
Word Count: 9,792
Disclaimer: Don't own.
If she had any interest in boys at all, she'd probably be in love with him.
That's her first thought.
The beginning part of that statement will change over the years, but the ending will always be the same.
... ... ...
He takes her hand once, behind her back, when mean, old Mr. Jacoby yells at them at temple for doing something she didn't even know was wrong.
There are tears in her eyes and she clenches her teeth, and then his hand is warm over hers and that's all she can think about, so she stops crying.
... ... ...
He tells her she has cooties and makes an 'x' with his index fingers and laughs with the other boys when she stomps her foot and fists her hands on her hips and tells him in no uncertain terms that she does not have cooties.
She tells her dads on him and they just laugh and seem to think it's funny and ask her if Noah has pulled her hair. Their smiles are conspiratorial when she insists that he has and that she doesn't like it one bit.
Noah kisses her on the cheek behind a tree at Davey Lowenstein's seventh birthday party and her skin tingles all the way home.
... ... ...
"You can't just do that!"
"I can too!"
"You're so stupid."
"I'm not stupid, I just hate this game!"
He gets frustrated with her and throws the basketball as hard as he can into the pool, and it makes a terribly loud sound and throws water everywhere.
"Your mom will yell at you for that," she states matter-of-factly.
He takes a step towards her and she knows he's trying to intimidate her. "Only if you tell."
She pushes him backwards into the pool and doesn't even get into trouble for it.
... ... ...
His dad leaves and Noah stops being nice to her even some of the time.
... ... ...
"Stop pushing!" she shrieks, and she's close to tears. She can't help it. She hates this, the way no one seems to care about her at all or even notice she's there.
Noah budges into the cafeteria line so he's right in front of her, and there's suddenly a whole lot more room around her, so she decides against yelling at him for jumping the line.
... ... ...
"Remember that time you kissed me?" she asks once, when they're practically alone at the JCC. Their parents have signed them up for babysitter's training, even though neither of them are very interested in it at all.
"Nope."
"I do," she says.
"Shut up."
"You kissed me on the cheek. I remember it."
"Shut up," he growls. "God."
She watches him wipe his palms on his pants and bounce his leg up and down like there are a million other places for a twelve year old boy to be on a Tuesday afternoon after school.
It's funny how, from the side, he sometimes looks like the boy who used to drop Skittles into her hand at temple when no one was looking.
"Why did you do it?" she asks quietly after a few moments.
He sighs, but doesn't look at her. "I dunno. Wanted to. And it was a million years ago, so shut up about it."
She doesn't mention it again, but when she waves to him from her father's car as they pull away, she sees the little smile on his lips.
... ... ...
She kisses him at his bar mitzvah, but she doesn't mean to. She goes to kiss his cheek and he turns his head at the last second and her lips land on his for a moment before she gasps and pulls away.
So that's how her first kiss is a mistake.
... ... ...
He kisses her at her bat mitzvah, takes her face in both his hands and holds it a little too tightly, and presses his lips to hers for a few moments before he pulls away and smiles at her.
So she decides that's her first kiss.
... ... ...
He pushes a note into her palm one day in the hallway, but won't look at her, and that's not exactly so strange. She feels like everyone's staring, wondering why he, the popular boy, is giving her, the nerd, notes. They're not paying any attention to her, which is the most normal thing about this situation, so she tucks the note into her bag and waits until she's home that night to read it.
The words 'don't tell' in his messy printing stare back at her, and she almost thinks she's heartbroken.
... ... ...
He tries to talk to her at temple one day when his mom is talking to the rabbi and he gets bored and walks away. Rachel watches him do it.
Looking back, it's the first time she realizes she's a second choice.
She turns her back as he approaches, puts her nose in the air a little bit, and taps her little gold ballet flat on the floor, impatiently waiting for her fathers to pull her along and tell her it's time to leave. She's pleading with them in her head, hoping they'll pick up on the fact that she wants to go home. She's got songs to practice and boys to avoid.
"Hey." He touches her elbow and she pulls it away. Not roughly, though, because she won't cause a scene. "What?"
"Nothing. I just don't want to speak to you," she says, her back still to him. She's standing with a table in front of her, playing nervously with the table cloth as she tries to be as mean to him as he's been to her.
"Why?"
"No reason," she says curtly, turning her shoulder when he tries to stand beside her. The truth is she finds him very cute, and looking at him will start to break down her resolve. "I think your mother wants you."
"Rachel," he says, and she detects a whine in his voice, but he really should have thought of that before he kissed her and regretted it.
Twice, maybe.
Her father waves her over just in time for her to avoid the rest of whatever conversation Noah is trying to have with her, and she walks away without saying goodbye.
... ... ...
He grabs her one night during the summer when they're at a barbecue and no one's looking, kisses her differently than he did that other time. His lips move gently against hers until she kisses him back, and his hand is around her wrist as she leans back against the side of the house they're at.
"Why did you do that?" she asks, looking into his eyes once he's pulled away.
He shrugs his shoulder. "Want to."
She notices the lack of past tense, smiles, and rests her head against his shoulder until he walks away a few minutes later.
... ... ...
He starts dating Santana Lopez the summer before freshman year. When she asks him about it ("Why her?") he rolls his eyes and looks at her like she's the most naive girl in the world, then walks away without really giving an answer.
She overhears Jacob saying he heard from Davey that Puck and Santana slept together, and she clues into the fact that she's got a crush on a boy who doesn't want her.
It'll be the first of many.
... ... ...
He sits down next to her one day at the JCC when she's supposed to be leading a music lesson but the younger kids are just playing and she can't find it in her to care.
"You're mad at me," he states, and she thinks it's at least nice that he's picked up on that.
"Why did you say you want to kiss me, then start dating her?"
"Fuck, Rach," he groans. He gets up and walks away, and the door slams behind her, and not only does she think it was wholly inappropriate for him to curse like that, but also, the least he could do was give her an honest answer.
He doesn't, however, have to say that sex has a lot (maybe everything) to do with it.
Try as she may, she can't make herself stop wanting him, even if he is too shallow to be with a girl he likes but who won't sleep with him.
... ... ...
Their parents arrange for him to walk her home from school when he stays after for football and she stays after to use the music room. Their schedules are coordinated so she doesn't have to walk home alone.
It's no secret she's got some kind of target on her back. She's bitter over the fact that if he'd just admit he's kind of almost a friend to her, people would probably leave her alone. Then again, it's his girlfriend who usually starts the tormenting. Pathetic as it is, she thinks as long as he doesn't join in, she can handle just about anything.
"Why are you always so quiet?" he asks abruptly one day. It's true. She is always quiet.
It's because all the thing she wants to say have to do with the two of them, and history has shown those questions don't always go over so well. She doesn't feel like arguing with him or giving him reason to ignore her any more than he already does.
Truth be known, she likes just walking home with him in silence. He always has his hands stuffed in his pockets and kicks stones on the sidewalk, and she always feels like she doesn't want to walk too quickly.
"I'm not."
"Rach, you practically spent our whole childhood talking my ear off," he says, smirks at her when she looks his way.
She shrugs her shoulder lazily, hooks her thumbs through the straps of her backpack. "I just never really know what to say to you, I guess."
It's the truth. He doesn't respond. He watches her walk up the walkway to her house, then continues on to his own.
... ... ...
One day, they're walking together, and she's heard about this week's very public breakup with Santana. Apparently the girl said something about his family and he called her a bitch and ended it right there in the middle of the cafeteria. Rachel doesn't eat in there, so she's not sure on the specifics.
About halfway to her neighbourhood, he sighs and looks at her. "Do you remember my dad?" he asks, like he just wants to know her answer, not anything else she might have to say that could related to that; just yes or no.
"Not really," she admits quietly.
"Yeah," he mumbles. "Me neither."
She wants to hold his hand but it's in his pocket, so she settles on running her hand down his back just once before crossing her arms over her chest. The rest of their walk is quiet. He walks her to the door this time instead of just waiting at the sidewalk.
... ... ...
She knows Finn Hudson is friends with Noah, but she's never actually talked to him, and judging by the looks she gets from Noah when he sees her talking to Finn in the hall, that's partly because her oldest friend (because that's what he is, even if he doesn't want to admit it) didn't want them talking.
She's old enough to make her own choices and speak with whomever she wants to speak with. She was before, too, it's just that no one wanted to talk to her. Now she's got people who might be her friends, and one of those happens to be Finn, and she really, really likes him.
It takes about a week and two duets for her to have a crush on him. He kisses her even though he has a girlfriend, and she knows it's wrong, but she doesn't really care about any of that until he realizes it, too, and then she cries, because this, her and him, is just really, really stupid.
Noah has a car now, and daddy got a new job with shorter hours that keeps him closer to home and allows him to pick her up from school. When she's waiting for him, there are dried tears on her cheeks and Noah walks out of the school on his way to his truck.
"What's wrong?" he asks, brow furrowed. She can't tell if it's annoyed or protective.
She figures that if anyone will listen to her, it's him, and that if anyone will understand Finn, it's him.
"Finn kissed me."
He says nothing, just stares at her for a minute and walks away.
She wants to know why he doesn't have more of a reaction than that.
... ... ...
Their attempt at dating is half-hearted at best. They understand one another better than anyone might believe, and she knows that's part of the problem.
They're probably too young for the kind of relationship they could have if they let themselves.
When they break up she's not surprised, and when she realizes the whole thing has been about Finn and Quinn, it hurts more than it should.
Underneath it all, she's still just the same girl she was at 13, wanting him to want her.
... ... ...
She pieces things together and begins to understand.
... ... ...
Finn breaks her heart like maybe she always knew he would, and Noah is preoccupied with Quinn, as he should be, and she starts dating Jesse, which is scary and exciting, since he's older and just...captivating.
He transfers schools and Noah gives her a look across the room like he doesn't approve.
She'd say it's really none of his business, but it probably is, somehow.
... ... ...
He tries to kiss her. She almost lets him.
Halfway through working on the arrangement of her song, she stops abruptly and refuses to meet his eyes as she asks, "are you mad at me?"
"For what?"
She shrugs and looks up from her lap to see that he's genuinely confused. "Anything."
"No," he answers, and somehow she knows he's not lying.
... ... ...
After Finn calls her a slut in front of the entire glee club and Jesse accuses her of breaking his heart, Noah passes her in the hall and nonchalantly throws over his shoulder at her, "still not mad."
It's the first thing she's really smiled at since she revealed her video.
... ... ...
He starts the trend, gets everyone sticking up for her, and she loves him for that.
... ... ...
"I never liked that Jesse guy," he tells her needlessly.
She laughs and he drops a hat onto her head as they prepare to take the stage for their funk number.
"I know," she says. She tries to take the hat off, but he stops her.
"'S'hot," he says.
He glances around and sees that no one is looking, and though he's supposed to be dating Mercedes or Quinn or Santana or whoever it is this week, he presses his lips against hers for a second and she's too shocked when he walks away to say anything about it.
... ... ...
He kisses her again, when he hears about her mom. She remembers being a child and the rest of the kids teasing her about her family situation, and him being the only one who really understood how she actually came to be.
She's in her red dress in the parking lot, waiting for her dads, and Noah comes up and grabs her elbow.
"C'mon," he says, pulling her gently towards his truck. Once they're inside and she's got her bag on her lap (that glass is inside and she doesn't want it to break) he keeps his eyes on the road as he speaks. "Your mom, huh?"
She just nods. She doesn't know what to say or what he wants to hear. He doesn't push the issue.
He curves his hand around the back of her neck before she goes to get out of his truck, pulls her over to him as he leans in. They meet in the middle and apparently he doesn't care that her dads could be watching from the windows.
"You should really stop doing that," she whispers, forehead pressed against his.
He just shakes his head, opens his eyes, and watches her as she gets out.
... ... ...
She congratulates him when his baby is born. He just nods and walks away.
She thinks there's something tragically poetic about this boy giving his baby away to her mother. Really, she should have seen it coming.
... ... ...
She starts dating Finn, but she still sees Noah only a few times over the course of the summer. She and Finn like to be alone, and Finn and Noah do things Rachel has no interest in, so their time with the common denominator (or so everyone would think) is limited.
One time during the middle of August, they're at temple and he walks up to her, hands in his pockets and eyes on the floor.
"You mad at me?"
She straightens his tie because it's a mess and she knows he's always hated wearing one (she's always loved them on him), and forces him to look at her as she says, "for what?"
"Anything?"
She shakes her head. "No."
He smiles a little and she's glad he knows when she's telling the truth.
... ... ...
She thought he was smart enough not to get himself arrested. He's been devious all his life, and yes, he's committed some petty crimes she doesn't approve of, and made some mistakes, but this is something different all together.
He's in juvie for three days until the charges are dropped, but she knows his mother, and he probably would have been safer behind bars because Mrs. Puckerman is going to be downright irate with him.
Still, Rachel goes over to the house once she hears he's out. She thinks it's safe to assume that she's the only one Mrs. Puckerman would allow in the house, since she's known this family practically her whole life.
She's more than a little surprised when he answers the door. Hannah is sitting on the couch, and as Rachel steps into the house, he tells the girl to go up to her room. She does so without being asked twice. Rachel has to wonder how much yelling has gone on in this household in the past couple days.
Rachel watches him sit back on the sofa, and she shouldn't be nervous. The fact that he's invited her in at all lets her know that he's okay with her questions. He obviously knows she's going to ask them.
"Noah, what happened?" she asks, because she knows there's no way he just did this incredibly stupid thing for no reason.
"Noth..."
"Don't lie to me," she insists harshly. "Don't."
He rolls his eyes, groans and puts his head in his hands. "Shit's tight, okay? At home. Money. Mom's working like crazy and...It's bad. I just wanted to help."
He's so dense.
"Getting arrested doesn't do that."
"I know!"
She sits down next to him and turns to him a little bit. "Why don't you just get a job? I'll help you. Last year when Finn..." Her voice trails and he looks at her from the corner of his eye. "I helped him."
"Then there's no one to take care of Hannah when mom's working. That's why I fuckin'...Try'n keep up, alright?" he says bitterly.
She doesn't like his tone, and she doesn't like his attitude. If he's going to be a jerk, she's walking out the door right now.
"Don't lash out at the one person who's concerned about you."
He looks her in the eye for the first time since she arrived, nods, and she thinks he might actually understand that she's right. No one else is coming around and asking how he is or why he did it or what's wrong. "And I'll still help you."
"Rachel."
"I can babysit," she states, hands on hips, and he furrows his brow.
"Finn'll love that," he mumbles, shaking his head.
"Finn will understand. I'm trying to be less selfish. This is an excellent place to start." She pulls her notebook out of her bag, and the newspaper she brought just in case this was the way this whole meeting would go, and sits down next to him again. "So, what skills do you have, other than petty crime and immense stupidity?"
He smirks at her like he's thankful (she knows he's not going to say the words), puts his feet up on the coffee table and leans back against the sofa. "I play guitar, too. Don't forget that."
She laughs at him and then promptly starts in on a lecture on responsibility that he doesn't even interrupt, because he probably knows he needs to hear it.
... ... ...
He's working as a bus boy at a coffee shop owned by one of her father's friends, and she spends two nights a week and all day Saturday looking after his sister.
Finn doesn't ask questions. Actually, he tells her he loves her for being so good to his best friend.
She thinks maybe Noah was her best friend first, but she doesn't say anything about that.
... ... ...
When she and Finn break up, it's Noah there to pick up the pieces. He brings her a decaf Earl Grey tea sweetened with honey, a box of tissues, and sits down on her bed, telling her he's prepared for an afternoon of her crying.
That's the thing. She hasn't cried at all.
Everyone thinks Finn broke up with her. In truth, it was the other way around.
Noah insists he'll keep that secret, even if he doesn't really understand why it is one. She explains that she's protecting Finn's reputation, so he won't be the guy who got dumped by the glee nerd.
Noah rolls his eyes. He might be the only one, but that's apparently just not how he sees her.
She sips her tea and he tells her about his 'promotion' to waiter, and how he made $50 in tips the other day.
She's not lying when she says she's proud of him. He slips his arm around her shoulder.
... ... ...
She doesn't really know why his mother starts referring to her as his girlfriend. She marches into his room one day after she hears his mother talking to someone at Temple about 'Noah's girlfriend, Rachel.'
"I just wanted her to, like, be proud of me," he says after she's (almost) finished ranting.
"So you did that by lying?" she yells, throwing her hands in the air.
"No!" he shouts back. "By giving her what she wants."
It takes her a second to fully comprehend that, then before she can stop herself, she puts her hands on his shoulders where he sits on the end of his bed, leans down, and kisses him.
It's really the first time she's been the one to kiss him in a long, long time, and she doesn't know what it means, so she leaves before either of them can question it.
... ... ...
They don't look one another in the eye for almost a week, until he catches up with her before they go on stage for one of their performances. She doesn't know whose idea it was to change the choreography so they're together and Mike and Santana are together, but judging by the look in his eye he may not exactly be an innocent party.
"You kissed me."
"I don't want to talk about this right now," she whispers, turning her back on him.
He puts his hand on his hip and leans down to speak into her ear. "Why are you whispering?"
"Noah."
Their cue comes and they make their way onto the stage. He holds her hand a little tighter than he has to.
... ... ...
She loses her virginity to him one night in the summer after they come back from losing at Nationals.
They've never dated. They aren't dating. She doesn't think he wants to. But they're friends. Actually, they're friends and everyone knows it now.
His mother still believes Rachel is his girlfriend, even though they've both told her repeatedly that no, they aren't together. She doesn't seem to want to believe them. At least she's stopped telling people.
It happens in July, when their friends all go camping and he has to work and she doesn't want to go if he's not. Of course, that's not what she says. Most of the glee club still just barely tolerates her, despite her efforts to win them over. She's actually listening to Noah now and she's stopped caring so much about what they think of her.
He comes over after he's done his shift. Her dad is away on a business trip, and Daddy's recovering from the stomach flu, so she doesn't want to leave him alone. He's asleep when Noah arrives, though, so they just go to her room and close the door, because her fathers are liberal. Very liberal.
She doesn't know how it happens, exactly. They go from talking about movies, to talking about sex in movies, to talking about sex. Then they're kissing and his shirt is off and she loves the way he feels, hard between her legs.
He's surprised she's a virgin. He wants to stop when she tells him, but she holds onto him tightly and tells him the truth.
"I honestly don't know who else I'd want to do this with," she admits quietly, eyes boring into his. He closes them for a second. "Noah, I want you."
She doesn't feel any different after, she just thinks their relationship is probably a lot more complicated than they'd like to admit.
... ... ...
He doesn't talk to her for two days, and she's not surprised or hurt by it. She knows him too well for any of that. He walks into her backyard one day when she's home alone, reading one of her guilty pleasure summer reads (there's nothing wrong with Gossip Girl) and sits at the edge of her lounge chair, hip brushing against her thighs.
"We should..."
He looks so good in his sleeveless shirt and board shorts that she cuts him off with the first thing that comes to mind.
"Have sex again?"
He stares at her for a moment, like he wants to be sure this is real. "I was gonna say talk, but your way works, too."
She laughs and he leans over to kiss her. They don't actually have sex again, but really, her suggesting it sets them up for how things will be for the rest of the summer.
They date quietly, do things together, sleep together, and try not to let on that any of this is happening. Mostly because his mother tends to run away with the idea of the two of them together.
Also because they really don't know how to navigate a relationship.
... ... ...
School starts and they stop. It's not a conversation they have or something they agree upon, but their little arrangement just stops once things get too busy for the both of them. He's taking extra classes to make up for ones he skipped and failed, and she's working at the dance studio for spending money and because it looks good on college applications.
Sam and Quinn break up and Rachel starts spending a little time with him, but it's nothing serious. They don't even kiss. They just talk about music and sometimes he plays guitar, and his family loves her, so she has dinner there some nights when her dads work late or are out of town on business.
Noah is jealous, even if he won't say anything.
They all go to a Halloween party at Santana's house. Noah dresses as Ari Gold (his favourite Jew, apparently) and Rachel is Jasmine from Aladdin. All the glee club girls are dressed as different Disney princesses. She wanted to be Belle, since the costume would be less skin-baring, but Santana was having none of it, so here she is in a very revealing costume that she secretly absolutely loves.
Noah pulls her into a dark hallway and slides his hand over the smooth skin of her stomach, left bare by her costume. He's looking down at her body like he hasn't seen her naked countless times.
"What's with you and Sam?" he asks abruptly, holding her hip too hard.
"Nothing. We're friends."
"Like you and I are friends?" He sounds far more bitter than he has a right to be, and the look she gives him must explain that. "Fuck. Sorry."
"I'm not going to date him," she says quietly, eyes fixed on the floor. She's not entirely sure when she started playing with his tie, but that's what's occupying her hands.
"You didn't date me."
She looks up at him and shakes her head a little. "Yes, I did."
He sighs. "Yeah. I know."
She leans up and kisses him quickly, and he lets her walk away far too easily for her liking.
... ... ...
It's like that all year, the two of them not together, but not totally not together, either.
He defends her when Mr. Schue tries to give her a lecture about fair play. She defends him when someone asks why he always gets out of Saturday rehearsals and why he can't switch his shifts.
They still do that thing where they kiss after the big moments. She finds him after he sticks up for her, takes his face between her hands and kisses him. She stops into the café for tea one day and there's no one around, so he kisses her quickly before she leaves.
It's strange, how something can be too much and not enough, all at the same time.
... ... ...
He's the first person she tells when she finds out she's gotten into NYU.
He comes to see her with his acceptance to Syracuse.
"We'll both be in New York State," he muses as he lays back on her bed.
She can't help herself. She straddles his hips and leans down and kisses him.
Not because this is the start of something, but because it could be the end.
... ... ...
She goes to see him once when she wants to get away from the craziness (and lack of friends) of the city.
She thinks it's strange that they don't sleep together the whole time she's there. Sure, he's got a roommate (Jared, a very nice boy from Florida), but they sleep in the same bed and he doesn't even try to touch her inappropriately.
To be honest, she was kind of hoping for it.
"So, I've kinda...I mean, there's a girl," he says on her last day there.
She doesn't know why she tries to smile, because he'll just see through it anyway, and she knows he's not surprised when she doesn't say anything about it, doesn't ask questions about the girl, and gets onto her bus back to New York after giving him nothing more than a hug.
... ... ...
Maybe she just always thought he was going to end up being the one.
... ... ...
She goes on a few dates with a boy she meets in her film studies class. He's nice, and he buys her dinners and makes her laugh and never really gets too far beneath the surface.
She doesn't sleep with him, even when her body wants her to.
She likes that there's one part of her only Noah has ever had.
... ... ...
By holiday break, Noah has broken up with Carmen. He surprises Rachel in New York and they rent a car and drive back to Ohio together, which is not at all part of the itinerary she sent her fathers, but she knows they'll understand.
She sleeps with him in a hotel in Pennsylvania after they turn out the lights and he whispers in her ear how much he's missed her.
It's strange to hear him speak like that, and she thinks it's out of character for a moment.
Then she stops caring and lets him push her pajama pants down off her hips.
... ... ...
She comes home for the summer and hears through the grapevine that he's dropped out of Syracuse.
She's downright pissed off.
The first time she sees him since the holiday break, she's marching up the walkway to his house and he's on the porch, shirtless and playing guitar.
Now is not the time for a reminder of how attractive he is.
He stops her midway through her rant about him dropping out and how he's ruining his life and 'what have we been working towards?'
The 'we' just slipped out.
"Who the fuck told you I dropped out?" he asks angrily. "I switched programs. Maybe don't fuckin' judge so quick."
"Well!" she shouts, throwing her arms up. "It does sound like you."
He stares at her for a moment, like he can't believe she just said that, and once she thinks about it she realizes why he's mad. Before she can apologize to him for it, he laughs bitterly and shakes his head.
"Thanks," he says.
That's all he says, though. He goes into the house and the turn of the lock echoes loudly in her ears.
... ... ...
His mother lets her in two weeks later, when she's sick of not talking to him. She misses him. She loves summers with him.
She slips into his room and he's half asleep, but he smiles lazily when he sees her, like he's too tired to remember that he should be mad at her. She sits down next to him on the bed, slides her hand over his bare stomach, and watches him blink the sleep away.
"I didn't mean it," she admits, and his hand covers hers.
"I know. Someone else would have, though."
It might not make a ton of sense, but she knows what he means by that. He tugs her wrist until she's laying parallel to him, kisses her hair and falls back to sleep.
She doesn't know exactly why they push one another so hard. She thinks it means something that they always pull one another back to the middle again.
... ... ...
"We're getting old," she says one night towards the end of summer. They're driving back from Columbus after visiting Finn and Quinn.
No, that wasn't awkward at all.
"Nah."
"Finn and Quinn are living together. Tina and Mike are engaged," she argues. "We're getting old."
"You think they could tell we're fucking?" he asks, and she sighs and glares at him from the passenger seat, because she hates it when he says it like that. "Sorry. That we're 'copulating'?"
He laughs hysterically. She hates that word more than the 'f' word.
"Probably not," she answers honestly once he's calmed himself. "They've never called us on it."
They both seem to be doing the math in their heads, trying to figure out just how long this has been going on.
... ... ...
"I had a date tonight," she tells him. They're back at school. It's terrible to not have the option of seeing him every day. She's trying to ignore that, though.
And yes, maybe there's a small part of her that's trying to make him jealous right now.
"Why would you tell me that?" he asks angrily.
"I don't know. It's just something that happened. I thought we told each other things."
"I'm not playing this game, Rachel, okay? You fuckin' wanna be with some theater douche, go for it. Don't give me the details."
Okay, she knows him well enough to know that anger equals jealousy.
"He's not in the theater, not that that's the point," she tells him. "I don't want to be with anyone else, Noah." There's a pause. She wants him to figure it out, but she knows he won't. "I just can't be with you, can I?"
He doesn't say anything, and they change the subject and basically pretend she never said it.
... ... ...
Don't be with anyone else, then.
She gets the text sometime around two in the morning, smiles to herself and doesn't even think she's mad at him for waking her up.
Go to bed, Noah.
Her phone rings seconds later, and she's smiling as she answers. She's so glad she has her own place and no roommate this year.
"I'm in bed," he tells her, "thinking about this shit."
She turns onto her side and tucks her hand under her cheek. "Really?"
"Well, you don't have to be, like, happy about that."
She giggles and she doesn't care what he says. She's going to be happy about this regardless.
... ... ...
She convinces him to come to New York for a week before they go to Lima for the holidays. Their break is three weeks long and their parents no longer (never really did, actually) question them spending time together.
She meets him at the bus station, and he drops his duffel and holds her instead, and she will not let her heart get ahead of her.
Except that it has been since she was probably way too young to even realize it.
That night, he sees her tattoo for the first time. It's silly, basically, but she wanted something that represented her love of music, so there's a delicate little treble clef on her rib cage. He traces it with his fingertip when he's got her shirt and bra off. It's like he's mesmerized by it. It's a little ticklish, so she puts her hand over his.
"When'd you get that?" he asks, looking into her eyes.
"September. Do you like it?" she asks. Judging by the smile on his face and the way he hasn't stop touching it since he saw it, she knows the answer.
"Yeah," he croaks out. He clears his throat and she tries not to laugh. "'S'hot."
He basically worships her. It feels different, this time. Sex has always been amazing, but this is different. It feels more like making love, even though she hates that term. She doesn't say anything to him about it, in part because she doesn't want him to tell her that's not what this is, and in part because she doesn't want him to stop anything he's doing right now.
... ... ...
They spend their entire week in New York acting like the couple they've never been, and when they get to Lima, she expects things to go back to how they always were; secret, quiet, subtle.
But the first party they go to, he pulls her onto his lap as he plays poker. The next day he holds her hand in front of his mother. He sits next to her at temple and she puts her hand on his knee. He spends the night at her house and her dads don't say anything about it.
New Year's Eve, they're attached at the hip, and he kisses her so many times before midnight, she doesn't even care about the ball dropping.
He still kisses her almost inappropriately when the clock turns to 12:00, and their friends don't seem surprised in the slightest.
... ... ...
She convinces him to spend one last night in New York with her before going back to school.
It doesn't take much convincing at all.
They lay in her bed, her curled against him and him playing with the ends of her hair. He has a hard time sleeping in the city, and she has a hard time sleeping without him. It's a catch-22. She wants to take advantage of their time together, but she wants to sleep like a baby, too.
It's nearing four in the morning when she wakes up and finds him on his side, looking at her. His lids are heavy and his hand is curved over her hip.
Maybe it's the sleepiness, but she can't stop herself from talking.
"It's in your best interest to fall in love with me."
"Why?" He smiles a little bit. She's not entirely surprised that he's not running for the door.
She pushes herself closer to him and tangles their legs together. "Because I'm beginning to feel like I'll always love you back."
He kisses her and she can't stop him, even though he's catching an early bus and she's exhausted. She wants to believe this is his way of giving in.
Then he murmurs, "love you," into the skin of her neck as he moves against her.
She has a hard time not falling apart just from the words.
... ... ...
She changes her name in his phone to read MY GIRLFRIEND. He laughs when she hands his phone back to him, kisses her cheek and tells her she's, "fucking crazy."
She shrugs her shoulder. It's not like it's the first time he's ever called her that. She knows he mostly doesn't mean it.
... ... ...
He transfers to NYU, and the fact that she's not surprised at all is probably a shock to all their friends. None of them seem to understand how important this relationship is, how serious. Or just how long it's been going on for. (Forever, perhaps, and she likes the sound of that.)
He moves the last of his things into her apartment on the third Saturday of June, and it's her that freaks out about them living together.
"I'm...I do...There are things you don't know!" she says, voice panicked as he stands there, infuriatingly calm, and sips from his beer.
"Such as?" he prods.
She's almost positive he's just going to use this to make fun of her. She doesn't care.
"I...I leave the bathroom door open when I shower in case there's a fire, so I don't burn my hand on the doorknob," she says. He blinks. She's sure he thinks she's fit for a straight jacket. "I drink orange juice from the carton. My closet is so organized it would scare you. I dance around in my underwear and sock feet and pretend I can moonwalk. Noah, I don't want you to see all that!"
He's chuckling as he sets his beer down on the counter and rests his hands on her hips. He kisses her quickly and tries to clam her down. "Means I can join you in the shower easily," he says. "You know I love shower sex." Of course, he's going to make her blush. Jerk. "Pretty sure drinking from the same orange juice carton's just about the most tame way we've ever shared saliva."
"Noah."
"I don't give a shit about your closet, to be honest." She rolls her eyes and looks up at him. "And please, please promise me you'll dance around in your underwear for me."
She leans her head against his chest and fists his shirt in her hands at his back. "Why do you even like me?"
She feels his laughter beneath her cheek and pulls away. "You kinda forced me into it."
She'd argue that if it wasn't at least partly true. He's never complained one way or the other.
... ... ...
They hold hands at Mike and Tina's wedding. Rachel wears a bridesmaid dress she knows he loves, and he's in a three piece suit, all black, and she's almost positive this whole wedding thing is overrated, but she still wants one. Eventually.
They're at the head table, and she's sipping champagne as he whispers in her ear. She knows their friends are staring, but she doesn't care. She knows that to everyone else it's strange that they're together, sharing an apartment and a life they keep rather quiet.
No one needs to know he keeps his things in the hall closet so as not to ruin her closet's organization, or that the first time he came home and she had Kanye West blaring as she slid across the kitchen floor in her sock feet, panties and tank top, he just laughed and wrapped his arms around her and dropped his pants around his ankles.
She certainly isn't about to mention what happened after that.
"You guys are, like, really...together?" Brittany asks, like she's missed an entire chapter of some story she wasn't ever really interested in anyway.
Rachel, just a little drunk, drapes herself over his lap and looks at their old friends.
"Noah and I are completely in love and have been since we were four years old."
Noah laughs and shakes his head, kisses her cheek. "Not quite, babe."
"Whatever," she says, looking away from him again. "He loves me and we're totally adorable."
Everyone laughs when he takes her champagne glass from her and pushes it as far away as he can. When she pulls him onto the dance floor, she knows everyone at the table is talking about them, but she doesn't care. One of her favourite country songs comes on, she holds him a little tighter.
"I think I've loved you that long," she says.
"Liar," he says, pulling her closer. "Finn."
"Well..." He laughs and kisses her. "That's your fault, too." He gives her a look and she giggles. That's mostly the champagne. "If you'd just admitted..."
"Whatever," he chuckles. "I was kinda dumb."
She stops moving and leans up on her toes to kiss him. "I won't hold it against you."
Smiling, he pulls her close so his lips are next to her ear. "Thanks, baby."
... ... ...
She graduates a week before he does. He sits with her dads and his mom and sister, and they're both really, really thankful that their families have splurged on hotel rooms rather than staying with them in their tiny apartment that's barely big enough for the two of them.
They go to dinner, the six of them, and Noah's mother makes a point of telling everyone the 'kids' are together. Nothing glaringly obvious, just things like, "My son and his girlfriend would like to sit next to one another," or, "My son's girlfriend is vegan."
The woman has wanted this as long as Rachel has been around. She supposes she can understand how exciting this is.
Her dads are just as thrilled, they just do it quietly.
"I think your mother would take me to Kleinfeld tomorrow if I let her," Rachel muses as they get into bed the night after his graduation ceremony.
"Yeah," he says, pulling her into his arms.
He's not spooked. Sometimes the reminders are nice that he loves her that much.
... ... ...
A year later, he's working as a physio assistant and she's in an Off-Off-Broadway show and they're still living in the same apartment, just a little more comfortably, she starts to think they're ready for something else.
When Finn and Quinn call to announce their engagement, Rachel starts wondering when it'll be their turn.
"You know, you can ask me if you want to," she says as they watch television. She doesn't elaborate, hoping he'll just get it.
"Yeah, I know," he says, and when she looks up at him, he's watching the television, but there's a little grin on his lips.
It's probably a bad thing, though, because she'll be on edge until she's wearing a ring.
... ... ...
She's barely waking up one morning when she feels him tugging at her hand, then something cold is on her finger. She blinks away the sleep and sees him laying on his side with a black ring box in one hand and her hand in his other. He sees that she's awake and kisses her palm.
"There you go," he says.
She smiles, doesn't even look at the ring before she pushes herself closer to him and kisses him.
He doesn't need to ask the question because she doesn't need to hear it and they both already know her answer anyway.
... ... ...
She knows he's happy when she insists she doesn't want a big wedding. To be honest, she just wants a simple white dress, their families and maybe a couple close friends, and a dinner somewhere.
"I love you for that shit," he says seriously when she outlines her perfect day with him. "Let's go to Mexico."
"Honeymoon?"
"No," he says, shaking his head. "For the whole thing."
She bites her lip, sits herself down on his lap and loves the way his hand instinctively goes to the inside of her thigh. (She won't lie and say she can resist him ever.)
"Make it Hawaii and you've got a deal."
... ... ...
His mother is her maid of honour. Her father is his best man. Their ceremony is small and she wears a knee-length white dress, he, a pair of light grey pants and white button down shirt, untucked.
They go back to their suite and pours him a glass of some Hawaiian beer he's fallen in love with as he unbuttons his shirt and takes it upon himself to unzip her dress.
"Perfect," he says against her shoulder.
She's not sure if he means her or the ceremony, but he keeps kissing her and she's too distracted to try and decide.
... ... ...
She tells him she's late on a Wednesday when they're 26. He gets a pregnancy test from the CVS down the street from their apartment and she spins her wedding ring on her finger until he returns. She thinks she's stupid for not going with him, but he told her to stay put and try not to lose her mind while he was gone.
That's a little more difficult than it should be, really.
They wait together on the end of the bed while three minutes ticks down on his cellphone's stopwatch. They don't talk about how this is unplanned and definitely not something they've ever put a timeline on. Kids, yes. They want those. They just haven't talked about when, or how much money they'll have or need, or if they'll finally move out of this tiny one-bedroom and into something bigger and nicer.
His phone chirps and she steps into the bathroom.
Her heart falls when she sees that she's not pregnant.
"Oh," he says when she shows him the test. "Oh." He grabs her, pulls her against him. "Okay. We'll...I mean, shit, Rach. We can...try?"
She couldn't love him more right now than she already does. She has this thought often but really, right now, with him somehow reading her mind on the matter, she thinks they're perfect together in every way.
"I want to," she admits, since she's been thinking about it for at least two hours and already decided on it before he even came home and she mentioned anything to him about potential babies. "Do you want to?"
He laughs quietly, kisses her hair, and nods. "Yeah."
He's never really been a man of many words. He chose the right one here.
... ... ...
Stella is three days old when Rachel wakes up to wailing in the middle of the night and tries to move, only to find that her body is still not entirely up to it.
"I got her," Noah says, running his hand through her hair before getting up from the bed and crossing the room to pick up the baby from her crib. Rachel watches from her place in bed as he murmurs to the baby and holds her close to his bare chest like they've learned she loves. "She's hungry, I think."
Rachel sits up against the headboard as he passes the baby to her before laying down on their bed again, propping himself up on his elbow.
"She's just like you, you know," he tells her, like it's a given and their daughter isn't just three days old. Rachel gives him a doubtful look. "Demanding, loud, stubborn, has me wrapped around her damn finger."
Rachel laughs and looks over at him while he plays idly with one of Stella's delicate little wisps of hair. "She'll probably marry a hoodlum just like I did," she says.
"Hmm."
He has this look - he's had it since they were kids - when there's something he wants to say to her but he doesn't really want to say it. She's had a lot of fun over the years trying to figure out what it is he's not telling her. She can usually figure it out very quickly.
"Lucky boy," she murmurs quietly. He pushes himself up so he can kiss her again, the way he always does when she guesses right. "Go back to sleep. I'll put her down again when she's done."
"It's alright," he says, voice thick with sleep, biting back a yawn.
He's not kidding about that 'wrapped around his finger' stuff. If Stella is awake, he wants to be awake with her.
Rachel lays the baby down between them after he dozes off, wakes up in the morning when she hears him speaking quietly to their daughter.
She thinks she did pretty well for herself.