We Become the Things We Do
Title: We Become the Things We Do
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Puck/Rachel
Warnings: Future!fic; spoilers for all aired episodes.
Author: domfangirl
Summary: A few years into their relationship, Puck and Rachel face a crisis.
Author's Notes: This fic supposes that Puck is a year older than Rachel (i.e., if she's a sophomore in current time on the show, Puck is a junior). The title of this fic, and some references in it, are lifted from the song “Blinded (When I See You)” by Third Eye Blind, which was given as a prompt.
Additional Author's Notes: This was written for the gleefics_exch Valentine's Day fic exchange, based on the incomparable andbless_mybaby's prompts. (Original posting HERE.) I owe special thanks to wrldpossibility and rdg1983 for their beta services, and all the rest of you who listened to me whine about how hard it was to write this. It was the actuality of writing this pairing that made me ship them, though Puck and Quinn will most likely remain my OTP for Glee.
Watching her is like staring at the sun. Deep down inside, he has always suspected that she is far too bright a star for him. His retinas burn now with the truth, and something like tears prick at the backs of his eyes. He remembers his teacher telling him to never look directly at the sun when they studied the solar system in fourth grade. Of course as soon as school was out, he'd gone right outside and stared up at the yellow ball until his eyes had watered.
This was far more painful than that.
Her brow puckers as she waits for his reaction. He imagines the emotion rocketing through him must flare in his pupils, just like the rush of something illegal slicking through his veins can blow out the hazel-green altogether and make them dark; not as dark as hers, but almost.
Like with everything. He is almost like her (talented and good looking, just not classically so, she's said that herself), almost good enough (could go to college if he really wanted to, writes a mean tune, plays the guitar well, and sings with passion-just not enough to get a degree in it). Almost what she needs, but not quite.
Good enough to come to New York with her, but so not worth holding on to.
*
New York would be the adventure of Noah Puckerman's life. When Rachel was accepted to NYU on a full-ride musical scholarship, there was no other place he would have gone. He wasn't planning on college anyway (had already bummed his first year after high school around Lima doing odd jobs and saving every penny for when they decided on where they were going), and New York was bound to have more opportunities for a decent day job that would let him play clubs at night until he could find someone who thought his music would get radio time.
Rachel was certain this would happen instantaneously. Puck was a little more realistic. He was good; he knew that. His songs only got better as he got older; his material had advanced from waxing lyrical about his truck, or (what he thought were) poetic ways of describing sex, to thoughts of an uncertain future in harsh economic times, and beautiful girls (okay, just one girl) who inspired loyalty and confidence, and once in a while he still snuck lines in like laying her out beneath me makes all the world beautifully ironic. She let him get away with it because secretly she wanted the world to know she'd tamed him.
After nine months in New York, that was obvious. They'd been together nearly three years now, high school sweethearts to those that had to label it, but Rachel still had her social niceties that she forced him to comply with. She had weird rules for herself that she called goals but Puck thought they were just structure she used to categorize where they were in their lives at present. It was all on her terms, and sometimes that really pissed him off.
When they'd moved to the city, she'd said, "Noah, I can't live with someone I'm not engaged to, and we are not ready to get engaged." He didn't tell her about the ring he'd found in a pawnshop a couple of months later, even though he'd bought it on the spot. He knew they were young, and he was in no hurry to get married either, but that ring had screamed Rachel's name when he saw it. It might have been someone else's cast off, a symbol of their broken relationship, but he'd never be able to buy her a more perfect one for $450. It was hidden in his sock drawer, or rather, the only drawer in the small kitchen of his studio apartment. Someday, when it was right, he'd give it to her, and they'd get a place together, finally.
He'd stopped fighting with her about the money they could save if they didn't both pay rent, because he could never win an argument with her other than to pin her down and fuck her mouth shut. So he convinced himself it was enough that they'd been together as long as they had and that she'd wanted him to come with her to New York even though her dads hadn't been too stoked about the idea. No two parents (gay or straight) had ever had a child who wanted to please them more (and he'd watched Quinn give their baby daughter away to get back into the good graces of hers) than Rachel Berry’s.
Telling them that she was taking her less-than-college-material boyfriend with her to New York City had virtually been like her telling them to fuck off. Well, maybe for Rachel, it would have been more like a politely whispered go to hell (hence the separate residences, he was sure of it). She didn't much use big swear words, and he could remember the few times she'd actually said 'fuck' ever. (It was only when he was doing just that to her, and he got her to beg him for it.)
She had declared her major as musical theater (big shocker). She constantly sang show tunes and prepared for random performances while simultaneously maintaining an A average in all her General Ed classes (that Puck couldn't see any point in taking when she wanted to sing and act for a living). It was just like a bigger production of Glee Club back home, except that he didn't know all the cast of characters, but the few that traipsed through Rachel's apartment when he happened to be there.
It wasn't that he was uninterested in her new friends, but rarely did he have much in common with any of them. They were theater types, not wannabe Rock Stars. He certainly noticed when guys showed up because he knew that she attracted them, whether she realized it or not. Most of the time she was oblivious to the threatening looks he gave the asshats who visibly shrank when they saw how wide Puck's shoulders were. Sometimes he purposely picked up Rachel's small 15 pounders and did quick rounds of 20 with them just to emphasize the strength he still maintained in the Puckerones. Once in a while she happened to glance around, saw the imminent cockfights, and ushered her co-stars out before anything could happen.
Often, those nights were the best sex nights, except that they were also the times Puck felt desperation licking at his heels as he pounded himself into her. His fingers gripped her hips too tightly, leaving marks behind, and when he sucked her skin up against his teeth she would whimper, the edge of pain in her throat not exactly what he intended.
Other times he'd purposely eat her out for like an hour; as if the time spent doing shit like that could bind her more tightly to him-like he did it all for her-as though it didn't sometimes make him go back in time to when he was a 15-year-old who couldn't hold his wad, and he'd come in his shorts. Rachel would be wet all over, the sweat across her skin a brand of a different kind. But part of him really believed-hoped-it would work to keep them together.
She'd smile lazily at him and roll up on to her side, falling asleep before he'd even laid on the bed next to her, her exhaustion his doing; then he'd stare up at the ceiling with crazy thoughts chasing after each other and ask himself how long it could go on this way.
Unbalanced.
Him fucking needing her more than she could ever need him.
*
Tears well up in her eyes, their brown depths fathomless. He's never been able to find the bottom, though he'd expected to, years ago. In Lima-in fucking high school-where nothing lasted, and they should have burned out quickly, especially with the Finn-shaped baggage she’d carried, and the Quinn-sized chip on his shoulder he'd hauled around. They should never have worked, and it's true that they'd made little sense together.
But the sense had come from the nonsensical, Rachel said. Often two things didn't seem like they went together ("like Glee and football, to borrow something smart Finn once said") but when you saw them side by side they complimented each other beautifully.
At least for a time. It's smart to recognize when that time is over and acknowledge it with more than a passing nod. (Puck thinks that, but he's not sure he can say it aloud.)
*
The first duet they sang together, back before they were a couple when their non-defined friendship had started to ingrain itself, was the Kid Rock/Sheryl Crow song Picture. It had been slightly risky in Rachel's opinion, and exactly the kind of statement Puck had wanted to make. "Let's shake things up, Berry," he said. "I've had enough of your sappy love duets with Finn. Let's do the ugly version of love." She agreed, after much coaxing on his part. (He seriously just used words to convince her, though that had been the first time he contemplated seducing Rachel Berry.)
Mr. Schuester grinned, his enthusiasm scaring Puck just a little. It bordered on Rachel-crazy, and back then, the reason he'd sung with her was because it was the only fucking way to get noticed. "Your voices compliment each other much more than I would have guessed," Schue said, rubbing his hands together like he was mentally noting all the raspy-voiced leads he could pin on Puck. For some reason, Puck had looked around the room then, and he saw this strange fear etched on Finn's face; it had been the beginning of the end.
He managed to hold off for the rest of that school year, despite his growing interest in not just her boobs or what was in her underpants. Sometime over the summer between his junior and senior year they'd hooked up, a party at Brittany's that had gone terribly wrong (or right? It had seemed right then). He'd had a few beers, and then they were in the master bedroom, and Rachel had climbed on top of him, a determined glint in her eyes he thought was solely reserved for Finn.
By the end of the evening, he had her virginity notched on his figurative belt (something she felt "burdened by, so I chose someone both experienced enough to make it good for me and a person I trust"). Puck had a what the fuck moment to learn that the girl he'd mercilessly slushied for more than a year would somehow choose him. It wasn't that he hadn't thought about it, but he'd gotten virgin-shy after Quinn. She also wrangled some kind of weird promise out of him that he didn't have to be her boyfriend, but he couldn't go around telling everyone that she gave it up to him.
He stewed over that for all of three days, and then he'd been on her doorstep saying, "Fuck that," because the world would know, and the only way they'd know was if he claimed ownership. So he had (he only gave the minor-ist of details to Chang and Rutherford after football practice that same day), and not so suddenly he'd realized that he was half in love with Rachel Berry.
He never said a word to Finn; he just waited until they were all in the hallway on the first day of school, and then casually looped his arm around Rachel's neck. Her fingers were caught in his, so the whole scene was like something out of a teen flick where The Moment had arrived and the two main characters made their walk down the hall as an item.
Funnily enough, they'd both loved it. After all, they both had star potential. Having the whole school talking about them had been flattering, and for once Puck hadn't had to see people whispering behind their hands about how he'd knocked up his best friend's girl, or how they'd given the baby away hours after she'd been born.
Everything after that had been only about them-Puck (Noah) and Rachel-the way it should have been. He'd gotten over Quinn (though he still dreams about his daughter to this day), and Rachel declared she'd never really loved Finn after all, because "who could love someone who didn't love you back? Love can't grow when it's not shared."
But it did grow, between the two of them, and though it made him happy, Puck knew it was fucked up because a girl like Rachel didn't match a guy like him. But for every fight they had, they had equal amounts of make-up sex and good times; fun dinners with his mother and sister but awkward ones with her gay dads; prom and all that shit that he would never have gone to except that Rachel roped him into it (and he'd secretly enjoyed), and even though she drove him crazy, it was a crazy he could live with, and soon discovered he didn't want to live without.
He told her he loved her for the first time after they did it on prom night. It was well past their first time, but Rachel's eyes had glistened with unshed tears and her fingers had gripped the back of his neck tightly when she whispered her own declaration.
It had been easy when he graduated from McKinley to stay in Lima for her last year of school. There wasn't any change to the status quo, other than he didn't see her everyday at school. They had their moments, but nothing really threatened their relationship, and they'd never broken up, or even come close to discussing it.
They didn't come out and say they'd grow old together either, but Puck felt pretty sure Rachel Berry was it for him. He still noticed other girls, sure, because he was a guy and his dick was a homing device of sorts, but he'd found that only sex with Rachel left him feeling good long after the euphoria of orgasm had passed. He'd stopped having moments where he felt like the man-whore he'd been on his way to becoming; the vicious cycle of feeling guilty for having had so much ass that only eased when he got more of it faded the longer they were together. When Rachel had sex with him ("This is making love, Noah"), he knew he was the only thing in her head, and her heart, and there was a lot to be said for that. Not that he went around campaigning for monogamy, but if anyone asked him, he'd tell them. Being a placeholder, or a way to get back at someone's husband sucked. The longer he was with Rachel, the better it got with her, and learning all the things she liked best became his favorite subject.
By the time they packed all their earthly possessions in his truck and drove to NYC, Puck figured it had been written years ago, and that he already knew the outcome. They would have to work hard and pay their dues, but this city of dreams was about to deliver to them what they'd come to want very much. They would be the couple no one understood; they'd defy the odds, including the doubts inside his own head.
*
He has the random thought that the music he creates from now on will be what gets him the record deal that has eluded him thus far. A broken heart is what propels everyone to the top, right?
"I don't understand," he says, because part of him thinks it can't be real. How many times has he wondered why she's with him? How many fights had come to a conclusion because she'd slammed out the door, threatening melodramatically to never come back? (But she always did.) Those fights had become more frequent after they'd come to New York, especially since four months ago he'd gotten wasted and made out with one of the groupies at the club. But he'd come clean, 'fessed up nice and neat, and she'd forgiven him after he promised no more drinking while working. (He hadn't told her about the coke.)
But today she's laying something on him with the expectation that he will be the one to end things.
"Noah," she whispers his name and her hand hovers over his arm, like she's afraid to touch him, and that messes with his head more than the words that came out of left field.
Rachel has never been shy with him, even back when maybe she should have been.
He looks at her face, dragging his eyes away from the hand that never touches him. The tears overflow and splash down her cheeks, her face crumpling sweetly, and that's what makes it connect totally in his head. He remembers that night, weeks ago now. It hadn't been one of their normal fights, the yelling screaming kind. It had been a lot like now, where she quietly declared something that every cell in his body disagreed with, only then, his reaction had been to prove to her how much they belonged together.
And he'd done so without a condom, a mistake he hadn't made since he'd found out Quinn was pregnant. They were good about double bagging-he bought the condoms, and Rachel was on some kind of birth control that she got at Planned Parenthood. They were both responsible, so even if they accidentally got irresponsible they were covered.
He loved her, and she loved him, and that's all that mattered. That's all that had ever mattered. But something inside of him had told him from minute one that that would never be enough, and now here they are.
Now, he wonders how it could have ever been love if this is what she wants-if this is the only solution that seems right to her.
"No. No," he says, finally finding words, even though they are useless denials that cannot change what she's just said.
"I've made up my mind," she states with a sniffle. "The appointment's tomorrow."
He can feel the anger, the rush of adrenaline that would normally leave him shouting and waving his arms around to make his point more plainly. Only, he doesn't know what his point would be. The phrases that slip from between his lips aren't even complete thoughts, "How can ... when you know... I've already... you're the one person who..." but she seems to understand everything perfectly because it makes her cry harder and nod her head in some sort of weird agreement with him.
She says chokingly, "If you never want to see me again, I understand," and his eyes snap up to her face, because she's like a total stranger.
A stranger who holds his heart in plain sight while she squeezes the shit out of it. And all he can think is that if she doesn't love him anymore, and she's leaving, and this is how she's doing it, he can only do one thing.
Let her.
*
"Babe, did I leave my guitar picks here the last time I was over?" he asked, picking up magazines and sheet music that covered the desk in the corner of Rachel's front room.
When there was no response, he looked around and realized she wasn't still in the room with him. "Rach?" he shouted, knowing his voice would carry all the way back to the bathroom easily. Her apartment wasn't as small as his, but it wasn't much bigger, even if they'd thrown up a wall on the east side to make her bedroom and bathroom separate from the kitchen and living room.
She appeared in the doorway, one of his old t-shirts skimming her bare thighs as she rubbed a towel at the ends of her wet, just-out-of-the-shower hair. "I haven't seen them," she said.
He looks back at her desk, knowing that if there was anything out of place, or not belonging to her, Rachel would have found it long before he could ask for it. That's when he noticed a flyer, words jumping out at him from above a photo of Rachel and some douche named Aaron Walters. "Come Celebrate the Songs of George Gershwin," it invited.
"Must've left 'em at the club," he muttered. He had a little black bag with a drawstring that generally went inside his guitar case and held his extra picks. Sometimes he tossed them into the crowd, depending on the vibe he got on any given night.
"Noah?"
Startled, he spun around because he didn't know she had moved closer until she spoke his name. The flyer was still in his hand. "We need to talk," she said. The expression on her face made him uneasy in a way he couldn't pinpoint.
"What's up?" he asked.
She tugged the flyer out of his grasp and tossed it back towards her desk. It wafted upward before settling down on the sheet music for Someone To Watch Over Me.
A roaring erupted in his head when she started in on something about seeing other people. He didn't think he shouted, but that might have been because he couldn't hear very well over the blood thumping through his temples. When he asked, "What mother fucking people?" her eyes had gone back towards her desk, and he said something like, "What, that guy isn't gay? I don't buy it." That made her angry, her eyes flashed, and so he accused her of fucking the guy.
She rolled her eyes and calmly said, "I'm not you."
It was the one time in all the years he'd known her that he really wanted to hit her. Instead, he moved away from the couch where they were sitting and grabbed that fucking powder blue flyer and crumpled it into a tight, tiny ball with one fist. The thing was, he'd never cheated on Rachel-not really. The skank he'd fingerbanged had breathed shit like "Your music makes me so hot," and "I've always wanted to be fucked in an alley," and it had made him forget for a second (or 45) that he was just some nobody from Lima, Ohio playing in a bottom basement club in the middle of Manhattan (and that his girlfriend was somewhere across town practicing show tunes with someone much more preferable rather than there with him). It wasn't really cheating. How could it be when they were all her to him, anyway?
That one had been on her knees in front of him, a breath away from wrapping her lips around his cock-and he'd pushed her away. He'd had a moment of clarity with the coke pounding in his veins, and he'd known he didn't want that life. So he'd walked away, and he hadn't gone back to that club, and he never would.
Well, maybe he would if she actually broke up with him.
It was on that thought that he threw the paper ball, not at her, not directly anyway. He had no response to her jibe, because to say anything would reveal too much when he was already stripped and flayed in front of her. He looked directly at her and asked after long minutes of silence, "Are you sure this is what you want?"
Tears appeared in her eyes and she shook her head, looking uncertain, and then he was on her. He pushed her-his-t-shirt up, knowing there was nothing but freshly washed skin beneath it. His thumbs found her nipples, already hard either from the chill of the room or his breath on her neck, he wasn't sure. Stroking, stroking and then she was gasping, her hands catching behind his upper arms, gripping tightly; then he had her under him on the couch, his jean-covered knee wedging itself between her legs. Her hips rolled, but he didn't move at all, just his thumbs whisking back and forth over the hardened tips of her breasts.
Early in their sexual relationship he'd discovered he could make her come from this contact only, if he caught her the week before her period. After being together for so long, he knew her menstrual cycle without even consulting a calendar. He watched her face, the blood coming up under her skin, her eyelids fluttering, and her lips alternately going slack and forming small little moans that made his hips rock in response.
As soon as she seized up, he moved a hand and thrust two fingers inside her none too gently, so that she half-screamed, half groaned in guttural surprise, a sound that nearly blew his head right off. He didn't lose his focus, however; instead he took her right back up, his fingers finding her g-spot with no problem. He whispered things that he believed, things that he thought she knew too, about how only he could give her this, how only he knew her so well, how there was no one on planet earth who could put up with either of them but each other.
He was mean, and sweet, both at the same time because he could feel her tears and hear her smiles, and then her hands were all over him, under his plaid button up, and inside the front of his jeans. Suddenly he was between her palms, their softness only teasing and caressing, not satisfying his need to be tightly surrounded by something warm and wet. Their eyes met, and she guided him inside her, but it wasn't until he came hotly a few minutes later, the reverberations shuddering up and down his spine, that he became totally aware of his latex-free skin.
When he croaked out the obvious, the orgasm still working its way through him in little aftershocks, she just laughed softly and said, "Don't worry about it. My period will come in a few days."
*
He thinks back on it now that she's delivered an announcement he can't quite process. He remembers how she'd stopped talking about leaving him, and how they'd made love again, slowly and thoroughly-again without a condom. They'd kissed and touched and defiled that sofa, and then he'd dragged her from it to bend her over the desk so he could watch her ass grind against his stomach until he wasn't sure that the milking motions around his cock was even what made him come. Having sex with condoms was smart; having sex without them was heavenly. Intoxicating. Better than any other high he'd ever experienced.
Rachel was not something he ever got tired of; some of her shit, sure, but never, ever her, never their fights if they led to fucking (which they always did), or their conversations about the future and everything they would do and be.
When the future arrives so abruptly, Rachel's solution is not something Puck can wrap his mind around. He stares at the tears on her face and knows the heartbreak in her eyes is real. He knows this, can feel it deep inside where shards of love and hate scrape against each other in his gut and he wants to beat the shit out of her at the same time he needs to hold her close and tell her it will work out.
Only, he doesn't think it will, and he's never been good at lying to her.
She moves towards the door, and he realizes now why she had wanted to come to his place, when normally they hung out at hers. It was so she could leave whenever she wanted to, not wait for him to storm out, or whatever she thought he'd do when she told him.
He wants to say something, but he's literally robbed of coherency. He has a million thoughts, but the anger he feels is not the hot-blooded kind that Rachel normally provokes in him. It's the impotent rage that he felt in Lima when Quinn Fabray let the entire school think that Finn Hudson was her baby daddy.
That was almost four years ago, but back then he'd been stranded on an island of regret that paralyzed him, and made him slink around in shame when that wasn't what he'd really felt.
Then she leaves, quietly closing the door behind her, and he doesn't follow after her. He just sits on the ratty overstuffed chair that is his only piece of real furniture, and contemplates the irony of something like this happening to him twice with two very different girls who had two very different solutions to the same problem.
He wonders what it would take to find a woman who would have his child without regret.
*
She knows that life is not like a movie. As she walks towards the double doors of the Planned Parenthood Clinic, she knows there won't be a girl standing out front with a protest sign. Nobody will tell her about her baby's fingernails, and she won't have an epiphany that she can't do this because of something so trivial.
The tears leaking from her eyes aren’t going to help convince the doctor that she's thought this through, however, and that she's fine with her decision. She is though. Totally fine with it. It's the right thing. It's the best thing. She knows that. She's only six weeks along. It's not even a baby yet, anyway.
She just needs to put on her Best Actress face and get on with it.
As she pulls the door open, she swipes at the irritating moisture with the cuff of her sweatshirt. She absolutely does not think about Noah as she walks up to the counter. "I'm Rachel Berry. I believe you have me scheduled for a procedure today?"
*
Sometimes she thought about how the fact that she'd fallen in love with the guy who had called her names throughout grade school, and then mightily abused her with high fructose corn syrup and ice during some of their high school years could send the wrong message. If she were starring in an after school special, it would not have wrapped up that way.
But when she listened to Noah sing, and when he kissed her, and every time he looked at her with a deceptively sweet expression that was totally sincere, she wanted to tell the critics in her head that they just didn't understand.
People changed. Noah Puckerman had changed, not super-dramatically, but enough. He'd grown to appreciate her. He'd also fallen in love with her, and that had changed everything.
They'd been living in New York for almost three months-in separate residences, much to Noah's irritation-when she was in his small apartment alone. She'd let herself in, because they had keys to each other's places even if they didn't live together, to start dinner. It was nothing fancy, just spaghetti, because that went far on a small budget, but Rachel had also found some asparagus on sale at the grocery store, so they were having something healthy as well.
She wasn't sure if melted butter on top would be enough incentive to get Noah to eat vegetables, but she had to try. She had promised his mother, after all, that she'd take care of him. She pulled open the one drawer in his tiny kitchen, forgetting until it was all but hanging from one of its back corners that he didn't have any large utensils, and that he kept his socks and underwear there instead of any kitchen-related items.
She shook her head, amusement at his strange need to store his underclothes in a place that they did not belong warring with slight annoyance that the drawer didn't seem to want to go back into its slot. After a momentary shove and jiggle, the stupid thing fell completely out, and, if not for her quick reflexes, would have landed right on one of her bare feet.
Uttering a curse word to the empty apartment, she turned back to the stove and quickly twisted the heat dial down under the burner. Then she picked up the drawer and fitted it back onto the track, sliding it in quite easily now that she was using both hands. Before she could pick up the socks and boxer briefs that decorated the small patch of linoleum, her cell phone rang.
"Rachel Berry," she said, holding the phone to her ear as she knelt down to pick up white socks and black underwear.
"Yeah, I know, that's why I called," he replied with faint sarcasm.
"Noah!" Rachel said. "I'm sorry, I didn't check the screen to see who was calling. I'm having a little trouble navigating around your kitchen."
"You're at my place?" he asked.
"Yes, remember? I told you I'd cook dinner for us tonight and then we can go to the club early, before your set, so we can listen to the other performers."
"Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember," he said. "Sorry, babe, I just thought it was gonna be later. Don't you usually have class until-“
"I blew it off, for you. Aren't you proud?" Rachel tossed rolled up sock pairs into the drawer and smiled as she heard him chuckle softly.
"I'll make a truant of you yet, Berry," he said.
And I'll make a scholar of you, she thought, finding it humorous that he didn't even notice his own usage of a word like 'truant.'
"Well, I'm on my way home, then, dear," he added in an exaggerated tone. "Should I pick anything up?"
Giggling, she said, "A bottle of wine would be fantastic."
"Any wine I can afford you'll think tastes like shit," he lamented. "How about wine coolers?"
"That works."
"You're so easy, Berry," his voice dropped a little, sending fingers of delight through her without even trying.
"Only for you," she replied, feeling a little sappy, but unable to help herself.
"You got that right. See you in 20. Love you, babe."
"I love you, too," she said before disconnecting the call. As she set her phone on the counter, she noticed one pair of socks that had flown further out than the others. It had landed on the carpet that was just beyond the tile, and differentiated between the kitchen and the living room/bedroom. She bent down to snag it and felt something hard tucked up on the bottom side. Flipping the socks over, she gasped when she saw the square-shaped lump.
A ring box, distinctive and obvious to any girl who had ever dreamed of being proposed to, was secured under the elastic band. As she opened it-it never occurred to her not to-tears sprang to her eyes. It was simply breathtaking, likely the most beautiful piece of jewelry she'd ever seen, and considering her parentage, she'd seen a lot of jewelry in her nearly 19 years. Her first thought was that it must have cost Noah a fortune because there were three large diamonds set in what had to be in-laid platinum. The center round-cut stone was at least two carats, possibly larger, and the two on either side of it were at least one carat themselves. Between the three stones were ribbons of smaller stones set into tiny, carved roses, the vines reaching down either side of the ring, and tapering off as it circled down into the bottom.
She stared at it for long minutes before she came back to herself and remembered that Noah was on his way home from work. This was obviously something he intended to give to her, not have her find from snooping through his things.
She tucked the ring away without trying it on-she wanted the first time she wore it to be when he put it on her finger-and began to dream up extravagant proposal scenarios. When and where was he planning to do it? Her birthday was in a few weeks, and that was the most likely time.
She knew they were young, and her fathers would most definitely not approve, but she really didn't care. Noah had bought her a ring!
She would marry Noah Puckerman. But her stage name would have to remain Rachel Berry, for obvious reasons.
*
Because she met him at the door as soon as he came in and gave him the blowjob of his lifetime, they were late leaving for the club. He wheezily pronounced her awesomeness as he leaned against the door gasping for air with one hand still clenched in her hair.
He wanted to know what had gotten into her, but she just smiled demurely and stripped her clothes off so that when he recovered, he would make love to her. They ate cold spaghetti an hour and a half later, but tossed the asparagus out since it had boiled down to mushy disgustingness, and then ran like mad to the subway, hoping to only be fashionably late.
The club where Noah performed was a fairly new gig for him, something he'd only played two previous weekends. It was in downtown Manhattan, and admittedly Rachel felt a little uncomfortable as they got deeper into the city. He just tucked her tighter against his side, whispering in her ear that he would protect her; then his tongue laved her earlobe, and Rachel felt her panties grow damp. She wondered if she would wake up some day and not want him so much that she was almost willing to scandalize everyone in the subway car with them by straddling his lap.
"I'm so excited to watch you perform tonight," she said, trying to pull her mind out of his pants. She hadn't been able to go the previous times, so she was excited for herself, and a little nervous for him.
"Mmm-hmmm," he mumbled, his lips rubbing up and down the column of her neck just below her ear. "I was hella excited to see you perform tonight," he murmured salaciously in her ear and then one of his hands snaked down, flicking her nipple through her shirt. Rachel tugged her jacket more closely around her, lightly smacking his hand away. "I'll be hard all night, knowing you didn't put your bra back on," he said lowly, his lips pressed right over her ear.
Completely aroused again, Rachel turned her head and captured his lips with hers. They kissed deeply, her tongue stroking just as urgently as his. She imagined how happy they would be once they were engaged and living together, and when his hand snuck back under her jacket and inside her low cut v-neck to strum her nipple some more, she didn't protest.
A few minutes later, she was climaxing as quietly as she could, the sounds swallowed up in Noah's mouth as his callused fingertips played her like she was his favorite chord on the guitar.
"Hey, get a room!" a voice called out. Noah lifted his head, raised his free hand and gave some guy the bird as Rachel inhaled heavily through her nose and tried to not moan wantonly as she rode the wave out.
"God, I love the week before your period," he breathed against her cheek a moment later. "You're so fucking horny, it's like I'm king of the world."
Rachel started laughing, caught by surprise at his take on the situation. She wanted to tell him that it was more than her standard horniness, but she couldn't ruin the surprise. "I'm so in love with you," she blurted instead, kissing his mouth sloppily.
He grinned, slow and wide. Kissing the end of her nose, he murmured, "Back atcha, babe."
*
An hour later, she listened as he sung his set of seven songs: an eclectic blend of covers-bands like Radiohead and Seether, and oldies from The Steve Miller Band and Neil Diamond that he interspersed with a few of his own songs, stories about small town kids coming to the big city to follow their dreams, and poignant tales of boys too young to be someone's father who said goodbye on the day they wanted to say hello, and of course, just straight up love songs about a girl with dark, bedroom eyes and the voice of an angel.
Rachel sat in that club, cataloging her love for him, and admiring how beautiful he was with his hair grown out, the natural curl he'd tamed with a mohawk for the majority of high school giving way to the pleas of a girlfriend who wanted something to hold on to when his head was between her thighs. She noticed that there were many women in the audience, and they were all hanging on his every move, cheering and catcalling, a few even getting embarrassingly loud when he sang, Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah, some call me the gangster of love.
It was a very good thing that they would be engaged soon, because these women needed to know he was taken.
*
"Please, have a seat in the waiting area, Ms. Berry. I see you've already filled out the necessary paper work when you met with Dr. Stone last week." The receptionist points to the empty chairs behind Rachel, and gives her a pained smile.
"Yes," Rachel confirms. "I made my appointment early today because she recommended I do it as early in the day as possible. Was that not right? Is she very busy right now? Because I can come back later, if that's better."
"Oh, no, no, this is the best time, that's correct. But Dr. Stone always has her staff meeting right now, so she doesn't actually consult with clients until 8:30. Which is when your appointment is. You're about 45 minutes early, dear." Again, the woman gives her a smile that is neither sincere nor very comforting.
Rachel does an about-face and heads for the empty chairs. She wonders why no one else is there. It's not like this is just a place to get an abortion. There are all kinds of services here, birth control being the most popular, she guesses, and it seems like in a city that never sleeps there would always be people here. Like, all the time. Constantly. The room should be filled up with persons in various stages of pre-emptive parenthood.
When Noah had pointed out to her that they'd had sex without a condom, she wishes she'd thought to come here the very next day to get the Morning After Pill. That would have been much simpler. Of course, she'd assumed her birth control would be enough; a truly foolish idea, obviously, since they'd had sex at least three times that day without any condoms. And Noah's sperm must be, like, super strength. Even through her nervousness that thought makes her smile. He would agree, no doubt.
Oh, Noah.
He'd been so happy. He'd loved doing it "naked," and honestly Rachel had never thought about it much, but there had been this greater sense of intimacy between them that day. He'd been desperate to make her stay, and she'd been desperate for a reason to. Sometimes she wondered if loving him was enough of one. She'd begun to question where they were really headed, and if it was possible that they could actually make it together. They weren't on the same path, even if they kept forcing their lives into the same space. College had introduced her to new things and people, and his playing at different bars all over New York City was definitely changing him.
She suspected things she didn't want to put a voice to, things that scared her, like drugs and women; temptations that a reformed bad boy from Lima, Ohio would find alluring. She also kept hoping he'd pull out the ring she'd found in his drawer so many months earlier, but he never did.
At first, she'd thought he was waiting for her birthday, or Christmas. But then Valentine's Day had also passed and he still hadn't asked her, so she began to worry about it all the time. She finally approached Aaron, her co-star in the Gershwin Revival they were doing as part of her musical theater class, and asked him what he thought it meant if a guy had bought a ring, a very long time ago, but had not yet given it to the girl for whom it was purchased.
"Having second thoughts, I'd guess," Aaron said nonchalantly as he hummed out a tune on the piano. Rachel had chewed on her bottom lip while contemplating this theory, and then two days later, Noah had come to her with a very serious face, and he'd actually cried a little while he told her about a girl he'd messed around with at the club.
Rachel had almost broken up with him right then, but he was truly penitent in a way she'd never seen before, and she'd assumed Aaron was right about the second thoughts. It was apparent he'd even acted out on those fears, but he'd also begged-or at least asked very sincerely-that she forgive him, and promised that he'd never do anything like that ever again. So she had, and things had been okay, though different, after that, almost like they couldn't quite get their footing back.
Most of all, there was still no proposal. Every time she couldn't go see one of his performances, she worried there was some woman tossing her panties literally on the stage, and/or stripping them off behind it after the show was over.
One day she'd gone into his apartment while he was at work and checked to see that the ring was still in his sock drawer. It was, of course, just as bright and shiny and beautiful as it had been when she first found it.
Now, as she sits in the waiting room, cursing her own inability to arrive just a few minutes before the designated time, she places a hand over her still-flat stomach. She has loved Noah Puckerman since she was 16 years old. She has always assumed that someday they would get married, and have children. Despite this, she can think of a lot of reasons why terminating this pregnancy is wise. She has her career to think about, after all, and it would be seriously derailed by an infant. College would be so much more difficult though not impossible to complete with a baby. Most likely, she would have move back in with her fathers.
Or, she and Noah would get married. That's her biggest fear, really. So she had made sure he didn't think the appropriate thing to do was run and get that ring and finally ask her under these circumstances. She hadn't even asked his opinion about the whole thing. That had to have hurt him very much, but she knew if she handled it that way then it was over on her terms, not because of whatever reason he would never fully communicate when he finally ended things. Because he most definitely would, eventually. Their lives were diverging, and she would not let him hold it together because of an accidental pregnancy.
It couldn't be like that. She knows what he's like, and what he'll do. And those were not the right reasons to do any of it. She shakes her head and snatches her hand away from her own body. Is she justifying herself to herself? What the hell is she thinking?
She tips her head back so that the new tears forming in her eyes cannot run down her cheeks, and blinks rapidly to hold them back. Why is it that whenever she hears swear words in her head, they only come in the form of one voice?
*
"I'm pregnant," she said, and then quickly before he could respond, she inserted, "and I'm going to have an abortion."
He staggered back from her, as if she'd punched him in the stomach, and took in one sharp breath, his face blank with shock.
At first. Then it had turned red, the anger visibly changing his appearance. Rachel felt afraid, but she stood unwavering in front of him. She had to be strong, and get through this, making sure he understood there was no need for heroic measures.
The longer he was silent, the more devastation she could read in his expression, and her own tears couldn't be stopped. She tried to control it, but it was a losing battle from the start. When he tried to argue with her, she shut him down. When he didn't reach for her, she walked out the door.
When he didn't come after her, she started running.
*
She checks her watch for the fifth time since she's been there, but it's only 8:15. There are still 15 minutes to endure before Dr. Stone will call her name. And then she will do something irreversible. But right. Necessary.
The only realistic option open to her, really.
She palms her cell phone, which sits in her left side hoodie pocket. It's April, spring has sprung, but it's still chilly in the mornings. The sweatshirt she'd grabbed on the way out of her apartment is, of course, one of Noah's.
It swallows her whole, warm and much too big. It smells like him, so she can close her eyes and imagine that she will see him again, just later today, or tomorrow. And he won't hate her. He'll smile, and his teeth will gleam in that big, bad wolf way he has about him and then his arm will circle her neck and pull her against his chest. He'll murmur, "Hey, Berry," into her temple, and she'll know that everything is fine.
She remembers wondering why Quinn hadn't had an abortion when she turned up pregnant, not by her boyfriend, and over time she'd come to realize the other girl’s religious upbringing had been the big deciding factor. Rachel had been raised much more liberally, and it had been impressed upon her for as long as she could remember that it was her body, and her decision. What nobody had told her, though, was that loving the man who had impregnated you made everything different. It made the reasons why you might make that choice infinitely more complicated, but also, bottomlined the simplicity of it.
To keep Noah's child was to keep Noah, in part, forever. And about 85% of her really wants to do that because she's been afraid losing him since, well, the beginning. It has increased over the last several months, though, progressing into a sickness of debate inside her. Leave him first, or wait for him to do it? Do the unthinkable, or wait for the humiliation?
Wasn't it ironic that she could hold on to him, or let him go either by having a baby or not having one? He was the only reason she would have a child at 19, and he was the only reason she could not ethically make that choice. It made her want to throw up in a precursor to the morning sickness she hadn't yet felt.
She should have at least called her fathers and told them what she was doing. Of course, they would have wanted to come up from Lima to be with her, but she just didn't think she could handle that. The sympathetic support of anyone would break her, would make her not just unable to do what she needed to do, but it might cripple her in every other way. Her functionality as a human being hung in the precarious balance.
Life with a trapped Noah, or no life with him whatsoever.
Her friend Wendy was supposed to pick her up when the appointment was over; she hadn't even told her what she was doing, just that she'd need a ride home. Wendy said she'd be available all day. Rachel was just supposed to call her when she’s ready.
Hi, I'm baby-free. Come get me, please!
She wipes at stray tears on her cheeks as the bell jingles over the door and someone else finally walks in. She thinks she's dreaming when she sees him come out from behind the huge, potted tree that blocks her view of the entrance. It's entirely possible that she's fallen to sleep; God knows she hadn't gotten much of it last night. She rubs her fingers over her cheekbones and squeezes her eyes tightly shut only to open them and see that it's really him.
She stands up as he moves closer, and she hisses, "What are you doing here?"
He shoves his hands deeply into his jeans pockets and stares at her, his eyes moving over the sweatshirt she's engulfed in and then down to her feet before slowly coming back up to her face. "I went to your place first, but you weren't there, so I guessed where else you might be," he answers, his voice mellow but hoarse, like he'd sung his heart out the night before.
She just looks at him, wondering what in the world he's going to say. When one of his hands moves out of his pocket, she swears she can see his hand curved around something in his palm. She has the horrifying thought that he's finally going to do it, he's going to propose to her in the waiting room of the Planned Parenthood building, and she just freaks out.
Throwing her arms wide, she gesticulates madly. "No! No, Noah. You cannot do this. I won't let you do this! That's not a solution, and you proposing to me is not going to change my mind!"
She knows her voice has reached a very high decibel because the non-helpful receptionist stands up and Rachel sees her, just past Noah's right shoulder, looking truly concerned. His hands go up, both palms completely empty, and his expression changes from timidity to incredulity. "Whoa, chillax, Berry. I'm not here to propose!" He looks over his shoulder as though he's become aware of their small audience. He steps closer to her, and when he reaches for her, she throws her arms up and sidesteps him. "What the fuck, Rachel?" he says sharply; their eyes meet, and Rachel feels gutted. She didn't want to have a confrontation, ever, and she really doesn't want to have one, here, of all places.
So she just turns away from him, because there's no place to go, she can't leave, and there must be like 12 more minutes until Dr. Stone's going to call her name. "Go away," she says, her voice cracking.
"Ray. Chel." He says each syllable emphatically, and she can feel him hovering right behind her, but he doesn't touch her. "I'm already here. You can send me away if you want, but I'm here. I'm doing my job. I'm supporting you. I don't like this idea, at all, but I couldn't fucking sleep last night. I just laid there thinking about putting a baby inside you, and someone taking it out, and me not being here just seemed so goddamned wrong. I-“ his voice cracks now, and Rachel wraps her arms around her middle, holding her own sobs inside.
There is this horribly long pause, and then he pleads, "Please...let me stay," and his voice is so quiet and penetrating, Rachel can't stop herself from turning around to face him.
He hasn't shaved, and his hair sticks out in an unruly mess from under the edges of his baseball cap. He looks as tired as she feels, and the only thing she wants is to fling herself into his arms. She wants it to be disbelief that assaults her at his arrival, but instead it's like being smacked with the "duh" stick. This is why she'd chosen him in the beginning, anyway. Because he wouldn't just walk away, it wasn't in him to do that. "If I do this," she asks tremulously, "do you think we'll survive it?"
He grimaces as though he's in some sort of physical pain, and shakes his head. He gestures vaguely like it's the entire room's fault he doesn't have a better answer. "Fuck, I don't know!” He folds his arms defensively over his chest, mirroring her body language, and says softly, “All I do know is this is where I should be right now."
Rachel drops his gaze to study her own fingers. She doesn't know either, but she figures with Noah's history, her plan was a pretty shitty one to begin with. The question of the millennia hovers behind her lips, and she sees that ring in his sock drawer for the thousandth time in her mind's eye.
"Why did you think I was gonna propose?" he asks, moving a step closer to her. His hand reaches out and snags one of hers, and she watches his much larger fingers weave in between her own smaller ones.
She shrugs. "I just know, you know. That you would have done anything to make things better with Quinn. I know, once upon a time, you offered to marry her, too."
She glances up just as he rolls his lips inside his mouth and squints at her as though he doesn't quite recognize her. "Rach, come on. You can't compare apples to fucking oranges. If we got married, it wouldn't be the same as me trying every trick I could think of to please Quinn's parents or get her to agree to keep the baby."
Instantly offended, Rachel snaps back, "So you wouldn't use every 'trick' to try to get me to keep this baby?"
He mutters a curse low under his breath and his hand tightens around hers, pulling her infinitesimally closer. "I'm saying, Crazy Horse, that if we got married, it would be because we love each other not because we're having a baby. Which we're not, are we? Because, you've made up your mind, without even asking me what I want. But, I love you, and I'm here. You've put up with my shit, so I'm putting up with yours," he pauses. She can tell he's weighing his words, something Noah Puckerman rarely does. "But I can't promise you what happens on the other side, Rach. Nobody can promise that. Nobody knows."
All the insecurities she's nurtured for months are at war with what she really wants. Forgiving Noah for his mistakes has been much harder than she originally anticipated, and it's possible she never completely had. But how can she not when he stands before her now with no expectations or demands? He holds no promises either, but the fact that he doesn't falsely guarantee something he can't seems to buoy her up.
It's been all the unspoken uncertainty that has scared her the most.
"Rachel?" Both of their heads jerk towards the sound of her name. "We're ready for you now." Dr. Stone stands expectantly in an open doorway, the one that leads to the exam rooms.
His hand squeezes hers, and they look at one another again. Then Rachel makes the choice that changes both of their lives forever.
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Puck/Rachel
Warnings: Future!fic; spoilers for all aired episodes.
Author: domfangirl
Summary: A few years into their relationship, Puck and Rachel face a crisis.
Author's Notes: This fic supposes that Puck is a year older than Rachel (i.e., if she's a sophomore in current time on the show, Puck is a junior). The title of this fic, and some references in it, are lifted from the song “Blinded (When I See You)” by Third Eye Blind, which was given as a prompt.
Additional Author's Notes: This was written for the gleefics_exch Valentine's Day fic exchange, based on the incomparable andbless_mybaby's prompts. (Original posting HERE.) I owe special thanks to wrldpossibility and rdg1983 for their beta services, and all the rest of you who listened to me whine about how hard it was to write this. It was the actuality of writing this pairing that made me ship them, though Puck and Quinn will most likely remain my OTP for Glee.
Watching her is like staring at the sun. Deep down inside, he has always suspected that she is far too bright a star for him. His retinas burn now with the truth, and something like tears prick at the backs of his eyes. He remembers his teacher telling him to never look directly at the sun when they studied the solar system in fourth grade. Of course as soon as school was out, he'd gone right outside and stared up at the yellow ball until his eyes had watered.
This was far more painful than that.
Her brow puckers as she waits for his reaction. He imagines the emotion rocketing through him must flare in his pupils, just like the rush of something illegal slicking through his veins can blow out the hazel-green altogether and make them dark; not as dark as hers, but almost.
Like with everything. He is almost like her (talented and good looking, just not classically so, she's said that herself), almost good enough (could go to college if he really wanted to, writes a mean tune, plays the guitar well, and sings with passion-just not enough to get a degree in it). Almost what she needs, but not quite.
Good enough to come to New York with her, but so not worth holding on to.
*
New York would be the adventure of Noah Puckerman's life. When Rachel was accepted to NYU on a full-ride musical scholarship, there was no other place he would have gone. He wasn't planning on college anyway (had already bummed his first year after high school around Lima doing odd jobs and saving every penny for when they decided on where they were going), and New York was bound to have more opportunities for a decent day job that would let him play clubs at night until he could find someone who thought his music would get radio time.
Rachel was certain this would happen instantaneously. Puck was a little more realistic. He was good; he knew that. His songs only got better as he got older; his material had advanced from waxing lyrical about his truck, or (what he thought were) poetic ways of describing sex, to thoughts of an uncertain future in harsh economic times, and beautiful girls (okay, just one girl) who inspired loyalty and confidence, and once in a while he still snuck lines in like laying her out beneath me makes all the world beautifully ironic. She let him get away with it because secretly she wanted the world to know she'd tamed him.
After nine months in New York, that was obvious. They'd been together nearly three years now, high school sweethearts to those that had to label it, but Rachel still had her social niceties that she forced him to comply with. She had weird rules for herself that she called goals but Puck thought they were just structure she used to categorize where they were in their lives at present. It was all on her terms, and sometimes that really pissed him off.
When they'd moved to the city, she'd said, "Noah, I can't live with someone I'm not engaged to, and we are not ready to get engaged." He didn't tell her about the ring he'd found in a pawnshop a couple of months later, even though he'd bought it on the spot. He knew they were young, and he was in no hurry to get married either, but that ring had screamed Rachel's name when he saw it. It might have been someone else's cast off, a symbol of their broken relationship, but he'd never be able to buy her a more perfect one for $450. It was hidden in his sock drawer, or rather, the only drawer in the small kitchen of his studio apartment. Someday, when it was right, he'd give it to her, and they'd get a place together, finally.
He'd stopped fighting with her about the money they could save if they didn't both pay rent, because he could never win an argument with her other than to pin her down and fuck her mouth shut. So he convinced himself it was enough that they'd been together as long as they had and that she'd wanted him to come with her to New York even though her dads hadn't been too stoked about the idea. No two parents (gay or straight) had ever had a child who wanted to please them more (and he'd watched Quinn give their baby daughter away to get back into the good graces of hers) than Rachel Berry’s.
Telling them that she was taking her less-than-college-material boyfriend with her to New York City had virtually been like her telling them to fuck off. Well, maybe for Rachel, it would have been more like a politely whispered go to hell (hence the separate residences, he was sure of it). She didn't much use big swear words, and he could remember the few times she'd actually said 'fuck' ever. (It was only when he was doing just that to her, and he got her to beg him for it.)
She had declared her major as musical theater (big shocker). She constantly sang show tunes and prepared for random performances while simultaneously maintaining an A average in all her General Ed classes (that Puck couldn't see any point in taking when she wanted to sing and act for a living). It was just like a bigger production of Glee Club back home, except that he didn't know all the cast of characters, but the few that traipsed through Rachel's apartment when he happened to be there.
It wasn't that he was uninterested in her new friends, but rarely did he have much in common with any of them. They were theater types, not wannabe Rock Stars. He certainly noticed when guys showed up because he knew that she attracted them, whether she realized it or not. Most of the time she was oblivious to the threatening looks he gave the asshats who visibly shrank when they saw how wide Puck's shoulders were. Sometimes he purposely picked up Rachel's small 15 pounders and did quick rounds of 20 with them just to emphasize the strength he still maintained in the Puckerones. Once in a while she happened to glance around, saw the imminent cockfights, and ushered her co-stars out before anything could happen.
Often, those nights were the best sex nights, except that they were also the times Puck felt desperation licking at his heels as he pounded himself into her. His fingers gripped her hips too tightly, leaving marks behind, and when he sucked her skin up against his teeth she would whimper, the edge of pain in her throat not exactly what he intended.
Other times he'd purposely eat her out for like an hour; as if the time spent doing shit like that could bind her more tightly to him-like he did it all for her-as though it didn't sometimes make him go back in time to when he was a 15-year-old who couldn't hold his wad, and he'd come in his shorts. Rachel would be wet all over, the sweat across her skin a brand of a different kind. But part of him really believed-hoped-it would work to keep them together.
She'd smile lazily at him and roll up on to her side, falling asleep before he'd even laid on the bed next to her, her exhaustion his doing; then he'd stare up at the ceiling with crazy thoughts chasing after each other and ask himself how long it could go on this way.
Unbalanced.
Him fucking needing her more than she could ever need him.
*
Tears well up in her eyes, their brown depths fathomless. He's never been able to find the bottom, though he'd expected to, years ago. In Lima-in fucking high school-where nothing lasted, and they should have burned out quickly, especially with the Finn-shaped baggage she’d carried, and the Quinn-sized chip on his shoulder he'd hauled around. They should never have worked, and it's true that they'd made little sense together.
But the sense had come from the nonsensical, Rachel said. Often two things didn't seem like they went together ("like Glee and football, to borrow something smart Finn once said") but when you saw them side by side they complimented each other beautifully.
At least for a time. It's smart to recognize when that time is over and acknowledge it with more than a passing nod. (Puck thinks that, but he's not sure he can say it aloud.)
*
The first duet they sang together, back before they were a couple when their non-defined friendship had started to ingrain itself, was the Kid Rock/Sheryl Crow song Picture. It had been slightly risky in Rachel's opinion, and exactly the kind of statement Puck had wanted to make. "Let's shake things up, Berry," he said. "I've had enough of your sappy love duets with Finn. Let's do the ugly version of love." She agreed, after much coaxing on his part. (He seriously just used words to convince her, though that had been the first time he contemplated seducing Rachel Berry.)
Mr. Schuester grinned, his enthusiasm scaring Puck just a little. It bordered on Rachel-crazy, and back then, the reason he'd sung with her was because it was the only fucking way to get noticed. "Your voices compliment each other much more than I would have guessed," Schue said, rubbing his hands together like he was mentally noting all the raspy-voiced leads he could pin on Puck. For some reason, Puck had looked around the room then, and he saw this strange fear etched on Finn's face; it had been the beginning of the end.
He managed to hold off for the rest of that school year, despite his growing interest in not just her boobs or what was in her underpants. Sometime over the summer between his junior and senior year they'd hooked up, a party at Brittany's that had gone terribly wrong (or right? It had seemed right then). He'd had a few beers, and then they were in the master bedroom, and Rachel had climbed on top of him, a determined glint in her eyes he thought was solely reserved for Finn.
By the end of the evening, he had her virginity notched on his figurative belt (something she felt "burdened by, so I chose someone both experienced enough to make it good for me and a person I trust"). Puck had a what the fuck moment to learn that the girl he'd mercilessly slushied for more than a year would somehow choose him. It wasn't that he hadn't thought about it, but he'd gotten virgin-shy after Quinn. She also wrangled some kind of weird promise out of him that he didn't have to be her boyfriend, but he couldn't go around telling everyone that she gave it up to him.
He stewed over that for all of three days, and then he'd been on her doorstep saying, "Fuck that," because the world would know, and the only way they'd know was if he claimed ownership. So he had (he only gave the minor-ist of details to Chang and Rutherford after football practice that same day), and not so suddenly he'd realized that he was half in love with Rachel Berry.
He never said a word to Finn; he just waited until they were all in the hallway on the first day of school, and then casually looped his arm around Rachel's neck. Her fingers were caught in his, so the whole scene was like something out of a teen flick where The Moment had arrived and the two main characters made their walk down the hall as an item.
Funnily enough, they'd both loved it. After all, they both had star potential. Having the whole school talking about them had been flattering, and for once Puck hadn't had to see people whispering behind their hands about how he'd knocked up his best friend's girl, or how they'd given the baby away hours after she'd been born.
Everything after that had been only about them-Puck (Noah) and Rachel-the way it should have been. He'd gotten over Quinn (though he still dreams about his daughter to this day), and Rachel declared she'd never really loved Finn after all, because "who could love someone who didn't love you back? Love can't grow when it's not shared."
But it did grow, between the two of them, and though it made him happy, Puck knew it was fucked up because a girl like Rachel didn't match a guy like him. But for every fight they had, they had equal amounts of make-up sex and good times; fun dinners with his mother and sister but awkward ones with her gay dads; prom and all that shit that he would never have gone to except that Rachel roped him into it (and he'd secretly enjoyed), and even though she drove him crazy, it was a crazy he could live with, and soon discovered he didn't want to live without.
He told her he loved her for the first time after they did it on prom night. It was well past their first time, but Rachel's eyes had glistened with unshed tears and her fingers had gripped the back of his neck tightly when she whispered her own declaration.
It had been easy when he graduated from McKinley to stay in Lima for her last year of school. There wasn't any change to the status quo, other than he didn't see her everyday at school. They had their moments, but nothing really threatened their relationship, and they'd never broken up, or even come close to discussing it.
They didn't come out and say they'd grow old together either, but Puck felt pretty sure Rachel Berry was it for him. He still noticed other girls, sure, because he was a guy and his dick was a homing device of sorts, but he'd found that only sex with Rachel left him feeling good long after the euphoria of orgasm had passed. He'd stopped having moments where he felt like the man-whore he'd been on his way to becoming; the vicious cycle of feeling guilty for having had so much ass that only eased when he got more of it faded the longer they were together. When Rachel had sex with him ("This is making love, Noah"), he knew he was the only thing in her head, and her heart, and there was a lot to be said for that. Not that he went around campaigning for monogamy, but if anyone asked him, he'd tell them. Being a placeholder, or a way to get back at someone's husband sucked. The longer he was with Rachel, the better it got with her, and learning all the things she liked best became his favorite subject.
By the time they packed all their earthly possessions in his truck and drove to NYC, Puck figured it had been written years ago, and that he already knew the outcome. They would have to work hard and pay their dues, but this city of dreams was about to deliver to them what they'd come to want very much. They would be the couple no one understood; they'd defy the odds, including the doubts inside his own head.
*
He has the random thought that the music he creates from now on will be what gets him the record deal that has eluded him thus far. A broken heart is what propels everyone to the top, right?
"I don't understand," he says, because part of him thinks it can't be real. How many times has he wondered why she's with him? How many fights had come to a conclusion because she'd slammed out the door, threatening melodramatically to never come back? (But she always did.) Those fights had become more frequent after they'd come to New York, especially since four months ago he'd gotten wasted and made out with one of the groupies at the club. But he'd come clean, 'fessed up nice and neat, and she'd forgiven him after he promised no more drinking while working. (He hadn't told her about the coke.)
But today she's laying something on him with the expectation that he will be the one to end things.
"Noah," she whispers his name and her hand hovers over his arm, like she's afraid to touch him, and that messes with his head more than the words that came out of left field.
Rachel has never been shy with him, even back when maybe she should have been.
He looks at her face, dragging his eyes away from the hand that never touches him. The tears overflow and splash down her cheeks, her face crumpling sweetly, and that's what makes it connect totally in his head. He remembers that night, weeks ago now. It hadn't been one of their normal fights, the yelling screaming kind. It had been a lot like now, where she quietly declared something that every cell in his body disagreed with, only then, his reaction had been to prove to her how much they belonged together.
And he'd done so without a condom, a mistake he hadn't made since he'd found out Quinn was pregnant. They were good about double bagging-he bought the condoms, and Rachel was on some kind of birth control that she got at Planned Parenthood. They were both responsible, so even if they accidentally got irresponsible they were covered.
He loved her, and she loved him, and that's all that mattered. That's all that had ever mattered. But something inside of him had told him from minute one that that would never be enough, and now here they are.
Now, he wonders how it could have ever been love if this is what she wants-if this is the only solution that seems right to her.
"No. No," he says, finally finding words, even though they are useless denials that cannot change what she's just said.
"I've made up my mind," she states with a sniffle. "The appointment's tomorrow."
He can feel the anger, the rush of adrenaline that would normally leave him shouting and waving his arms around to make his point more plainly. Only, he doesn't know what his point would be. The phrases that slip from between his lips aren't even complete thoughts, "How can ... when you know... I've already... you're the one person who..." but she seems to understand everything perfectly because it makes her cry harder and nod her head in some sort of weird agreement with him.
She says chokingly, "If you never want to see me again, I understand," and his eyes snap up to her face, because she's like a total stranger.
A stranger who holds his heart in plain sight while she squeezes the shit out of it. And all he can think is that if she doesn't love him anymore, and she's leaving, and this is how she's doing it, he can only do one thing.
Let her.
*
"Babe, did I leave my guitar picks here the last time I was over?" he asked, picking up magazines and sheet music that covered the desk in the corner of Rachel's front room.
When there was no response, he looked around and realized she wasn't still in the room with him. "Rach?" he shouted, knowing his voice would carry all the way back to the bathroom easily. Her apartment wasn't as small as his, but it wasn't much bigger, even if they'd thrown up a wall on the east side to make her bedroom and bathroom separate from the kitchen and living room.
She appeared in the doorway, one of his old t-shirts skimming her bare thighs as she rubbed a towel at the ends of her wet, just-out-of-the-shower hair. "I haven't seen them," she said.
He looks back at her desk, knowing that if there was anything out of place, or not belonging to her, Rachel would have found it long before he could ask for it. That's when he noticed a flyer, words jumping out at him from above a photo of Rachel and some douche named Aaron Walters. "Come Celebrate the Songs of George Gershwin," it invited.
"Must've left 'em at the club," he muttered. He had a little black bag with a drawstring that generally went inside his guitar case and held his extra picks. Sometimes he tossed them into the crowd, depending on the vibe he got on any given night.
"Noah?"
Startled, he spun around because he didn't know she had moved closer until she spoke his name. The flyer was still in his hand. "We need to talk," she said. The expression on her face made him uneasy in a way he couldn't pinpoint.
"What's up?" he asked.
She tugged the flyer out of his grasp and tossed it back towards her desk. It wafted upward before settling down on the sheet music for Someone To Watch Over Me.
A roaring erupted in his head when she started in on something about seeing other people. He didn't think he shouted, but that might have been because he couldn't hear very well over the blood thumping through his temples. When he asked, "What mother fucking people?" her eyes had gone back towards her desk, and he said something like, "What, that guy isn't gay? I don't buy it." That made her angry, her eyes flashed, and so he accused her of fucking the guy.
She rolled her eyes and calmly said, "I'm not you."
It was the one time in all the years he'd known her that he really wanted to hit her. Instead, he moved away from the couch where they were sitting and grabbed that fucking powder blue flyer and crumpled it into a tight, tiny ball with one fist. The thing was, he'd never cheated on Rachel-not really. The skank he'd fingerbanged had breathed shit like "Your music makes me so hot," and "I've always wanted to be fucked in an alley," and it had made him forget for a second (or 45) that he was just some nobody from Lima, Ohio playing in a bottom basement club in the middle of Manhattan (and that his girlfriend was somewhere across town practicing show tunes with someone much more preferable rather than there with him). It wasn't really cheating. How could it be when they were all her to him, anyway?
That one had been on her knees in front of him, a breath away from wrapping her lips around his cock-and he'd pushed her away. He'd had a moment of clarity with the coke pounding in his veins, and he'd known he didn't want that life. So he'd walked away, and he hadn't gone back to that club, and he never would.
Well, maybe he would if she actually broke up with him.
It was on that thought that he threw the paper ball, not at her, not directly anyway. He had no response to her jibe, because to say anything would reveal too much when he was already stripped and flayed in front of her. He looked directly at her and asked after long minutes of silence, "Are you sure this is what you want?"
Tears appeared in her eyes and she shook her head, looking uncertain, and then he was on her. He pushed her-his-t-shirt up, knowing there was nothing but freshly washed skin beneath it. His thumbs found her nipples, already hard either from the chill of the room or his breath on her neck, he wasn't sure. Stroking, stroking and then she was gasping, her hands catching behind his upper arms, gripping tightly; then he had her under him on the couch, his jean-covered knee wedging itself between her legs. Her hips rolled, but he didn't move at all, just his thumbs whisking back and forth over the hardened tips of her breasts.
Early in their sexual relationship he'd discovered he could make her come from this contact only, if he caught her the week before her period. After being together for so long, he knew her menstrual cycle without even consulting a calendar. He watched her face, the blood coming up under her skin, her eyelids fluttering, and her lips alternately going slack and forming small little moans that made his hips rock in response.
As soon as she seized up, he moved a hand and thrust two fingers inside her none too gently, so that she half-screamed, half groaned in guttural surprise, a sound that nearly blew his head right off. He didn't lose his focus, however; instead he took her right back up, his fingers finding her g-spot with no problem. He whispered things that he believed, things that he thought she knew too, about how only he could give her this, how only he knew her so well, how there was no one on planet earth who could put up with either of them but each other.
He was mean, and sweet, both at the same time because he could feel her tears and hear her smiles, and then her hands were all over him, under his plaid button up, and inside the front of his jeans. Suddenly he was between her palms, their softness only teasing and caressing, not satisfying his need to be tightly surrounded by something warm and wet. Their eyes met, and she guided him inside her, but it wasn't until he came hotly a few minutes later, the reverberations shuddering up and down his spine, that he became totally aware of his latex-free skin.
When he croaked out the obvious, the orgasm still working its way through him in little aftershocks, she just laughed softly and said, "Don't worry about it. My period will come in a few days."
*
He thinks back on it now that she's delivered an announcement he can't quite process. He remembers how she'd stopped talking about leaving him, and how they'd made love again, slowly and thoroughly-again without a condom. They'd kissed and touched and defiled that sofa, and then he'd dragged her from it to bend her over the desk so he could watch her ass grind against his stomach until he wasn't sure that the milking motions around his cock was even what made him come. Having sex with condoms was smart; having sex without them was heavenly. Intoxicating. Better than any other high he'd ever experienced.
Rachel was not something he ever got tired of; some of her shit, sure, but never, ever her, never their fights if they led to fucking (which they always did), or their conversations about the future and everything they would do and be.
When the future arrives so abruptly, Rachel's solution is not something Puck can wrap his mind around. He stares at the tears on her face and knows the heartbreak in her eyes is real. He knows this, can feel it deep inside where shards of love and hate scrape against each other in his gut and he wants to beat the shit out of her at the same time he needs to hold her close and tell her it will work out.
Only, he doesn't think it will, and he's never been good at lying to her.
She moves towards the door, and he realizes now why she had wanted to come to his place, when normally they hung out at hers. It was so she could leave whenever she wanted to, not wait for him to storm out, or whatever she thought he'd do when she told him.
He wants to say something, but he's literally robbed of coherency. He has a million thoughts, but the anger he feels is not the hot-blooded kind that Rachel normally provokes in him. It's the impotent rage that he felt in Lima when Quinn Fabray let the entire school think that Finn Hudson was her baby daddy.
That was almost four years ago, but back then he'd been stranded on an island of regret that paralyzed him, and made him slink around in shame when that wasn't what he'd really felt.
Then she leaves, quietly closing the door behind her, and he doesn't follow after her. He just sits on the ratty overstuffed chair that is his only piece of real furniture, and contemplates the irony of something like this happening to him twice with two very different girls who had two very different solutions to the same problem.
He wonders what it would take to find a woman who would have his child without regret.
*
She knows that life is not like a movie. As she walks towards the double doors of the Planned Parenthood Clinic, she knows there won't be a girl standing out front with a protest sign. Nobody will tell her about her baby's fingernails, and she won't have an epiphany that she can't do this because of something so trivial.
The tears leaking from her eyes aren’t going to help convince the doctor that she's thought this through, however, and that she's fine with her decision. She is though. Totally fine with it. It's the right thing. It's the best thing. She knows that. She's only six weeks along. It's not even a baby yet, anyway.
She just needs to put on her Best Actress face and get on with it.
As she pulls the door open, she swipes at the irritating moisture with the cuff of her sweatshirt. She absolutely does not think about Noah as she walks up to the counter. "I'm Rachel Berry. I believe you have me scheduled for a procedure today?"
*
Sometimes she thought about how the fact that she'd fallen in love with the guy who had called her names throughout grade school, and then mightily abused her with high fructose corn syrup and ice during some of their high school years could send the wrong message. If she were starring in an after school special, it would not have wrapped up that way.
But when she listened to Noah sing, and when he kissed her, and every time he looked at her with a deceptively sweet expression that was totally sincere, she wanted to tell the critics in her head that they just didn't understand.
People changed. Noah Puckerman had changed, not super-dramatically, but enough. He'd grown to appreciate her. He'd also fallen in love with her, and that had changed everything.
They'd been living in New York for almost three months-in separate residences, much to Noah's irritation-when she was in his small apartment alone. She'd let herself in, because they had keys to each other's places even if they didn't live together, to start dinner. It was nothing fancy, just spaghetti, because that went far on a small budget, but Rachel had also found some asparagus on sale at the grocery store, so they were having something healthy as well.
She wasn't sure if melted butter on top would be enough incentive to get Noah to eat vegetables, but she had to try. She had promised his mother, after all, that she'd take care of him. She pulled open the one drawer in his tiny kitchen, forgetting until it was all but hanging from one of its back corners that he didn't have any large utensils, and that he kept his socks and underwear there instead of any kitchen-related items.
She shook her head, amusement at his strange need to store his underclothes in a place that they did not belong warring with slight annoyance that the drawer didn't seem to want to go back into its slot. After a momentary shove and jiggle, the stupid thing fell completely out, and, if not for her quick reflexes, would have landed right on one of her bare feet.
Uttering a curse word to the empty apartment, she turned back to the stove and quickly twisted the heat dial down under the burner. Then she picked up the drawer and fitted it back onto the track, sliding it in quite easily now that she was using both hands. Before she could pick up the socks and boxer briefs that decorated the small patch of linoleum, her cell phone rang.
"Rachel Berry," she said, holding the phone to her ear as she knelt down to pick up white socks and black underwear.
"Yeah, I know, that's why I called," he replied with faint sarcasm.
"Noah!" Rachel said. "I'm sorry, I didn't check the screen to see who was calling. I'm having a little trouble navigating around your kitchen."
"You're at my place?" he asked.
"Yes, remember? I told you I'd cook dinner for us tonight and then we can go to the club early, before your set, so we can listen to the other performers."
"Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember," he said. "Sorry, babe, I just thought it was gonna be later. Don't you usually have class until-“
"I blew it off, for you. Aren't you proud?" Rachel tossed rolled up sock pairs into the drawer and smiled as she heard him chuckle softly.
"I'll make a truant of you yet, Berry," he said.
And I'll make a scholar of you, she thought, finding it humorous that he didn't even notice his own usage of a word like 'truant.'
"Well, I'm on my way home, then, dear," he added in an exaggerated tone. "Should I pick anything up?"
Giggling, she said, "A bottle of wine would be fantastic."
"Any wine I can afford you'll think tastes like shit," he lamented. "How about wine coolers?"
"That works."
"You're so easy, Berry," his voice dropped a little, sending fingers of delight through her without even trying.
"Only for you," she replied, feeling a little sappy, but unable to help herself.
"You got that right. See you in 20. Love you, babe."
"I love you, too," she said before disconnecting the call. As she set her phone on the counter, she noticed one pair of socks that had flown further out than the others. It had landed on the carpet that was just beyond the tile, and differentiated between the kitchen and the living room/bedroom. She bent down to snag it and felt something hard tucked up on the bottom side. Flipping the socks over, she gasped when she saw the square-shaped lump.
A ring box, distinctive and obvious to any girl who had ever dreamed of being proposed to, was secured under the elastic band. As she opened it-it never occurred to her not to-tears sprang to her eyes. It was simply breathtaking, likely the most beautiful piece of jewelry she'd ever seen, and considering her parentage, she'd seen a lot of jewelry in her nearly 19 years. Her first thought was that it must have cost Noah a fortune because there were three large diamonds set in what had to be in-laid platinum. The center round-cut stone was at least two carats, possibly larger, and the two on either side of it were at least one carat themselves. Between the three stones were ribbons of smaller stones set into tiny, carved roses, the vines reaching down either side of the ring, and tapering off as it circled down into the bottom.
She stared at it for long minutes before she came back to herself and remembered that Noah was on his way home from work. This was obviously something he intended to give to her, not have her find from snooping through his things.
She tucked the ring away without trying it on-she wanted the first time she wore it to be when he put it on her finger-and began to dream up extravagant proposal scenarios. When and where was he planning to do it? Her birthday was in a few weeks, and that was the most likely time.
She knew they were young, and her fathers would most definitely not approve, but she really didn't care. Noah had bought her a ring!
She would marry Noah Puckerman. But her stage name would have to remain Rachel Berry, for obvious reasons.
*
Because she met him at the door as soon as he came in and gave him the blowjob of his lifetime, they were late leaving for the club. He wheezily pronounced her awesomeness as he leaned against the door gasping for air with one hand still clenched in her hair.
He wanted to know what had gotten into her, but she just smiled demurely and stripped her clothes off so that when he recovered, he would make love to her. They ate cold spaghetti an hour and a half later, but tossed the asparagus out since it had boiled down to mushy disgustingness, and then ran like mad to the subway, hoping to only be fashionably late.
The club where Noah performed was a fairly new gig for him, something he'd only played two previous weekends. It was in downtown Manhattan, and admittedly Rachel felt a little uncomfortable as they got deeper into the city. He just tucked her tighter against his side, whispering in her ear that he would protect her; then his tongue laved her earlobe, and Rachel felt her panties grow damp. She wondered if she would wake up some day and not want him so much that she was almost willing to scandalize everyone in the subway car with them by straddling his lap.
"I'm so excited to watch you perform tonight," she said, trying to pull her mind out of his pants. She hadn't been able to go the previous times, so she was excited for herself, and a little nervous for him.
"Mmm-hmmm," he mumbled, his lips rubbing up and down the column of her neck just below her ear. "I was hella excited to see you perform tonight," he murmured salaciously in her ear and then one of his hands snaked down, flicking her nipple through her shirt. Rachel tugged her jacket more closely around her, lightly smacking his hand away. "I'll be hard all night, knowing you didn't put your bra back on," he said lowly, his lips pressed right over her ear.
Completely aroused again, Rachel turned her head and captured his lips with hers. They kissed deeply, her tongue stroking just as urgently as his. She imagined how happy they would be once they were engaged and living together, and when his hand snuck back under her jacket and inside her low cut v-neck to strum her nipple some more, she didn't protest.
A few minutes later, she was climaxing as quietly as she could, the sounds swallowed up in Noah's mouth as his callused fingertips played her like she was his favorite chord on the guitar.
"Hey, get a room!" a voice called out. Noah lifted his head, raised his free hand and gave some guy the bird as Rachel inhaled heavily through her nose and tried to not moan wantonly as she rode the wave out.
"God, I love the week before your period," he breathed against her cheek a moment later. "You're so fucking horny, it's like I'm king of the world."
Rachel started laughing, caught by surprise at his take on the situation. She wanted to tell him that it was more than her standard horniness, but she couldn't ruin the surprise. "I'm so in love with you," she blurted instead, kissing his mouth sloppily.
He grinned, slow and wide. Kissing the end of her nose, he murmured, "Back atcha, babe."
*
An hour later, she listened as he sung his set of seven songs: an eclectic blend of covers-bands like Radiohead and Seether, and oldies from The Steve Miller Band and Neil Diamond that he interspersed with a few of his own songs, stories about small town kids coming to the big city to follow their dreams, and poignant tales of boys too young to be someone's father who said goodbye on the day they wanted to say hello, and of course, just straight up love songs about a girl with dark, bedroom eyes and the voice of an angel.
Rachel sat in that club, cataloging her love for him, and admiring how beautiful he was with his hair grown out, the natural curl he'd tamed with a mohawk for the majority of high school giving way to the pleas of a girlfriend who wanted something to hold on to when his head was between her thighs. She noticed that there were many women in the audience, and they were all hanging on his every move, cheering and catcalling, a few even getting embarrassingly loud when he sang, Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah, some call me the gangster of love.
It was a very good thing that they would be engaged soon, because these women needed to know he was taken.
*
"Please, have a seat in the waiting area, Ms. Berry. I see you've already filled out the necessary paper work when you met with Dr. Stone last week." The receptionist points to the empty chairs behind Rachel, and gives her a pained smile.
"Yes," Rachel confirms. "I made my appointment early today because she recommended I do it as early in the day as possible. Was that not right? Is she very busy right now? Because I can come back later, if that's better."
"Oh, no, no, this is the best time, that's correct. But Dr. Stone always has her staff meeting right now, so she doesn't actually consult with clients until 8:30. Which is when your appointment is. You're about 45 minutes early, dear." Again, the woman gives her a smile that is neither sincere nor very comforting.
Rachel does an about-face and heads for the empty chairs. She wonders why no one else is there. It's not like this is just a place to get an abortion. There are all kinds of services here, birth control being the most popular, she guesses, and it seems like in a city that never sleeps there would always be people here. Like, all the time. Constantly. The room should be filled up with persons in various stages of pre-emptive parenthood.
When Noah had pointed out to her that they'd had sex without a condom, she wishes she'd thought to come here the very next day to get the Morning After Pill. That would have been much simpler. Of course, she'd assumed her birth control would be enough; a truly foolish idea, obviously, since they'd had sex at least three times that day without any condoms. And Noah's sperm must be, like, super strength. Even through her nervousness that thought makes her smile. He would agree, no doubt.
Oh, Noah.
He'd been so happy. He'd loved doing it "naked," and honestly Rachel had never thought about it much, but there had been this greater sense of intimacy between them that day. He'd been desperate to make her stay, and she'd been desperate for a reason to. Sometimes she wondered if loving him was enough of one. She'd begun to question where they were really headed, and if it was possible that they could actually make it together. They weren't on the same path, even if they kept forcing their lives into the same space. College had introduced her to new things and people, and his playing at different bars all over New York City was definitely changing him.
She suspected things she didn't want to put a voice to, things that scared her, like drugs and women; temptations that a reformed bad boy from Lima, Ohio would find alluring. She also kept hoping he'd pull out the ring she'd found in his drawer so many months earlier, but he never did.
At first, she'd thought he was waiting for her birthday, or Christmas. But then Valentine's Day had also passed and he still hadn't asked her, so she began to worry about it all the time. She finally approached Aaron, her co-star in the Gershwin Revival they were doing as part of her musical theater class, and asked him what he thought it meant if a guy had bought a ring, a very long time ago, but had not yet given it to the girl for whom it was purchased.
"Having second thoughts, I'd guess," Aaron said nonchalantly as he hummed out a tune on the piano. Rachel had chewed on her bottom lip while contemplating this theory, and then two days later, Noah had come to her with a very serious face, and he'd actually cried a little while he told her about a girl he'd messed around with at the club.
Rachel had almost broken up with him right then, but he was truly penitent in a way she'd never seen before, and she'd assumed Aaron was right about the second thoughts. It was apparent he'd even acted out on those fears, but he'd also begged-or at least asked very sincerely-that she forgive him, and promised that he'd never do anything like that ever again. So she had, and things had been okay, though different, after that, almost like they couldn't quite get their footing back.
Most of all, there was still no proposal. Every time she couldn't go see one of his performances, she worried there was some woman tossing her panties literally on the stage, and/or stripping them off behind it after the show was over.
One day she'd gone into his apartment while he was at work and checked to see that the ring was still in his sock drawer. It was, of course, just as bright and shiny and beautiful as it had been when she first found it.
Now, as she sits in the waiting room, cursing her own inability to arrive just a few minutes before the designated time, she places a hand over her still-flat stomach. She has loved Noah Puckerman since she was 16 years old. She has always assumed that someday they would get married, and have children. Despite this, she can think of a lot of reasons why terminating this pregnancy is wise. She has her career to think about, after all, and it would be seriously derailed by an infant. College would be so much more difficult though not impossible to complete with a baby. Most likely, she would have move back in with her fathers.
Or, she and Noah would get married. That's her biggest fear, really. So she had made sure he didn't think the appropriate thing to do was run and get that ring and finally ask her under these circumstances. She hadn't even asked his opinion about the whole thing. That had to have hurt him very much, but she knew if she handled it that way then it was over on her terms, not because of whatever reason he would never fully communicate when he finally ended things. Because he most definitely would, eventually. Their lives were diverging, and she would not let him hold it together because of an accidental pregnancy.
It couldn't be like that. She knows what he's like, and what he'll do. And those were not the right reasons to do any of it. She shakes her head and snatches her hand away from her own body. Is she justifying herself to herself? What the hell is she thinking?
She tips her head back so that the new tears forming in her eyes cannot run down her cheeks, and blinks rapidly to hold them back. Why is it that whenever she hears swear words in her head, they only come in the form of one voice?
*
"I'm pregnant," she said, and then quickly before he could respond, she inserted, "and I'm going to have an abortion."
He staggered back from her, as if she'd punched him in the stomach, and took in one sharp breath, his face blank with shock.
At first. Then it had turned red, the anger visibly changing his appearance. Rachel felt afraid, but she stood unwavering in front of him. She had to be strong, and get through this, making sure he understood there was no need for heroic measures.
The longer he was silent, the more devastation she could read in his expression, and her own tears couldn't be stopped. She tried to control it, but it was a losing battle from the start. When he tried to argue with her, she shut him down. When he didn't reach for her, she walked out the door.
When he didn't come after her, she started running.
*
She checks her watch for the fifth time since she's been there, but it's only 8:15. There are still 15 minutes to endure before Dr. Stone will call her name. And then she will do something irreversible. But right. Necessary.
The only realistic option open to her, really.
She palms her cell phone, which sits in her left side hoodie pocket. It's April, spring has sprung, but it's still chilly in the mornings. The sweatshirt she'd grabbed on the way out of her apartment is, of course, one of Noah's.
It swallows her whole, warm and much too big. It smells like him, so she can close her eyes and imagine that she will see him again, just later today, or tomorrow. And he won't hate her. He'll smile, and his teeth will gleam in that big, bad wolf way he has about him and then his arm will circle her neck and pull her against his chest. He'll murmur, "Hey, Berry," into her temple, and she'll know that everything is fine.
She remembers wondering why Quinn hadn't had an abortion when she turned up pregnant, not by her boyfriend, and over time she'd come to realize the other girl’s religious upbringing had been the big deciding factor. Rachel had been raised much more liberally, and it had been impressed upon her for as long as she could remember that it was her body, and her decision. What nobody had told her, though, was that loving the man who had impregnated you made everything different. It made the reasons why you might make that choice infinitely more complicated, but also, bottomlined the simplicity of it.
To keep Noah's child was to keep Noah, in part, forever. And about 85% of her really wants to do that because she's been afraid losing him since, well, the beginning. It has increased over the last several months, though, progressing into a sickness of debate inside her. Leave him first, or wait for him to do it? Do the unthinkable, or wait for the humiliation?
Wasn't it ironic that she could hold on to him, or let him go either by having a baby or not having one? He was the only reason she would have a child at 19, and he was the only reason she could not ethically make that choice. It made her want to throw up in a precursor to the morning sickness she hadn't yet felt.
She should have at least called her fathers and told them what she was doing. Of course, they would have wanted to come up from Lima to be with her, but she just didn't think she could handle that. The sympathetic support of anyone would break her, would make her not just unable to do what she needed to do, but it might cripple her in every other way. Her functionality as a human being hung in the precarious balance.
Life with a trapped Noah, or no life with him whatsoever.
Her friend Wendy was supposed to pick her up when the appointment was over; she hadn't even told her what she was doing, just that she'd need a ride home. Wendy said she'd be available all day. Rachel was just supposed to call her when she’s ready.
Hi, I'm baby-free. Come get me, please!
She wipes at stray tears on her cheeks as the bell jingles over the door and someone else finally walks in. She thinks she's dreaming when she sees him come out from behind the huge, potted tree that blocks her view of the entrance. It's entirely possible that she's fallen to sleep; God knows she hadn't gotten much of it last night. She rubs her fingers over her cheekbones and squeezes her eyes tightly shut only to open them and see that it's really him.
She stands up as he moves closer, and she hisses, "What are you doing here?"
He shoves his hands deeply into his jeans pockets and stares at her, his eyes moving over the sweatshirt she's engulfed in and then down to her feet before slowly coming back up to her face. "I went to your place first, but you weren't there, so I guessed where else you might be," he answers, his voice mellow but hoarse, like he'd sung his heart out the night before.
She just looks at him, wondering what in the world he's going to say. When one of his hands moves out of his pocket, she swears she can see his hand curved around something in his palm. She has the horrifying thought that he's finally going to do it, he's going to propose to her in the waiting room of the Planned Parenthood building, and she just freaks out.
Throwing her arms wide, she gesticulates madly. "No! No, Noah. You cannot do this. I won't let you do this! That's not a solution, and you proposing to me is not going to change my mind!"
She knows her voice has reached a very high decibel because the non-helpful receptionist stands up and Rachel sees her, just past Noah's right shoulder, looking truly concerned. His hands go up, both palms completely empty, and his expression changes from timidity to incredulity. "Whoa, chillax, Berry. I'm not here to propose!" He looks over his shoulder as though he's become aware of their small audience. He steps closer to her, and when he reaches for her, she throws her arms up and sidesteps him. "What the fuck, Rachel?" he says sharply; their eyes meet, and Rachel feels gutted. She didn't want to have a confrontation, ever, and she really doesn't want to have one, here, of all places.
So she just turns away from him, because there's no place to go, she can't leave, and there must be like 12 more minutes until Dr. Stone's going to call her name. "Go away," she says, her voice cracking.
"Ray. Chel." He says each syllable emphatically, and she can feel him hovering right behind her, but he doesn't touch her. "I'm already here. You can send me away if you want, but I'm here. I'm doing my job. I'm supporting you. I don't like this idea, at all, but I couldn't fucking sleep last night. I just laid there thinking about putting a baby inside you, and someone taking it out, and me not being here just seemed so goddamned wrong. I-“ his voice cracks now, and Rachel wraps her arms around her middle, holding her own sobs inside.
There is this horribly long pause, and then he pleads, "Please...let me stay," and his voice is so quiet and penetrating, Rachel can't stop herself from turning around to face him.
He hasn't shaved, and his hair sticks out in an unruly mess from under the edges of his baseball cap. He looks as tired as she feels, and the only thing she wants is to fling herself into his arms. She wants it to be disbelief that assaults her at his arrival, but instead it's like being smacked with the "duh" stick. This is why she'd chosen him in the beginning, anyway. Because he wouldn't just walk away, it wasn't in him to do that. "If I do this," she asks tremulously, "do you think we'll survive it?"
He grimaces as though he's in some sort of physical pain, and shakes his head. He gestures vaguely like it's the entire room's fault he doesn't have a better answer. "Fuck, I don't know!” He folds his arms defensively over his chest, mirroring her body language, and says softly, “All I do know is this is where I should be right now."
Rachel drops his gaze to study her own fingers. She doesn't know either, but she figures with Noah's history, her plan was a pretty shitty one to begin with. The question of the millennia hovers behind her lips, and she sees that ring in his sock drawer for the thousandth time in her mind's eye.
"Why did you think I was gonna propose?" he asks, moving a step closer to her. His hand reaches out and snags one of hers, and she watches his much larger fingers weave in between her own smaller ones.
She shrugs. "I just know, you know. That you would have done anything to make things better with Quinn. I know, once upon a time, you offered to marry her, too."
She glances up just as he rolls his lips inside his mouth and squints at her as though he doesn't quite recognize her. "Rach, come on. You can't compare apples to fucking oranges. If we got married, it wouldn't be the same as me trying every trick I could think of to please Quinn's parents or get her to agree to keep the baby."
Instantly offended, Rachel snaps back, "So you wouldn't use every 'trick' to try to get me to keep this baby?"
He mutters a curse low under his breath and his hand tightens around hers, pulling her infinitesimally closer. "I'm saying, Crazy Horse, that if we got married, it would be because we love each other not because we're having a baby. Which we're not, are we? Because, you've made up your mind, without even asking me what I want. But, I love you, and I'm here. You've put up with my shit, so I'm putting up with yours," he pauses. She can tell he's weighing his words, something Noah Puckerman rarely does. "But I can't promise you what happens on the other side, Rach. Nobody can promise that. Nobody knows."
All the insecurities she's nurtured for months are at war with what she really wants. Forgiving Noah for his mistakes has been much harder than she originally anticipated, and it's possible she never completely had. But how can she not when he stands before her now with no expectations or demands? He holds no promises either, but the fact that he doesn't falsely guarantee something he can't seems to buoy her up.
It's been all the unspoken uncertainty that has scared her the most.
"Rachel?" Both of their heads jerk towards the sound of her name. "We're ready for you now." Dr. Stone stands expectantly in an open doorway, the one that leads to the exam rooms.
His hand squeezes hers, and they look at one another again. Then Rachel makes the choice that changes both of their lives forever.