*can't buy me a time machine (replace you with a million rings)
GLEE FANFIC; PUCK + QUINN; welcome to my master plan of writing fic for every single prompt of the Jar of Hearts challenge at gleeverse. This is the Puck+Quinn phase: three drabbles that tie together into one longer fic. My inner Quick shipper died soon after season one because their dynamic is season three is just so, so messed up it's not my cup of angsty tea, but I like my good old-fashioned Quinndependence as and when it comes.
and in tiny text because no one in this fandom really watches this stuff, but I'm so flipping ecstatic anyway, the Gooners are back... 7-1 fifth place again baby lose hard, win like a boss
can't buy me a time machine (replace you with a million rings)
"You have a girlfriend," she sneers. "You're one relationship unqualified from going on a roadtrip with me."
"My girlfriend could kick your ass in a catfight any day, Milf."
Codas to 2.14 blame it on the alcohol. Quinn enjoys shoving at Puck's boundaries; Puck enjoys getting her back for it. It's their way of being friends.
In another life, I would be your girl,
We'd keep all our promises, be us against the world.
~Katy Perry, The One That Got Away.
Puck lets Quinn drive him home after Rachel's party in his truck. He's practical enough to understand why she should be the gentleman in this situation, and the memory of her effortlessly knocking back tequila shots without chasers makes him shudder. When she stops the truck in her driveway, turning to him, her eyes in the porch lights are cool, hard, bright, and coldly sober.
"I'm going to my room upstairs," she tells him, slowly, crisply so that he doesn't miss a word. "You're to park two streets down, take the back door, and join me. It hasn't been so long that you don't remember where my room is, is it?"
His head feels like it's attached loosely to his neck, like one of those wobbly dashboard puppies with heads on a spring, bobbing crazily. Even as he nods, trying to keep the world from spinning and tilting around him, he's aware that he's being given an invitation.
"Keep it PG-rated, Romeo," snaps Quinn, smacking his knee. He grins sloppily, unaware that he'd been that transparent. "I'd let you sleep it off in the front seat right here, but the last time someone did that in my neighbourhood, they nearly got arrested. You can sleep on my floor instead, and crawl out the window in the morning before my mom finds out."
Or you could drive me home, and come back tonight, he wants to suggest cheekily, but she looks positively dangerous tonight. If he's not wrong, she wants him around tonight. So he tries to stop nodding, and puts his hand over hers on his knee, lightning fast before she can pull away, and gives it a squeeze.
Quinn tugs her hand free, and hits him again, less effectually this time, and Puck catches it again, interlacing their fingers, warm and cold.
She was right. He remembers the way, where the carpet is threadbare, and where it'll muffle the thump of his boots. He remembers every step, even through his hazy, alcohol-addled memory, from the night he took the last of Quinn Fabray's innocence, painful teenage-man crush and forbidden fruit all rolled into one.
He wakes up on her floor, to the harsh sunlight driving lancers into his head. He opens his eyes to find her standing over him, curtain cord in her hand. Groaning, he doesn't remember going to sleep right under the window, but then again, he really is easy to roll in his sleep.
"What time is it?" he asks, trying to pull his T-shirt over his head to shield it from being cracked open by the morning sun.
"Six," she replies gleefully. "Mom's about to go jogging, and I'm meeting her downstairs in two minutes. Try not to break a hip when you let yourself out." She nods once at the window, and steps over him, heading for her closet. A hooded shirt and running shorts are hanging from a hook, and he imagines that's her gear.
Pushing himself up on one elbow, he rubs his eyes as he realises Quinn is most unself-consciously shucking her moose-patterned pyjama bottoms where she stands. Keep it PG-rated is all he remembers of last night. Her thighs are firmer, toned, slimmer from the last time he remembers, her panties a boring dark blue instead of white lace, and the view disappears quickly with the shorts sliding up the perfect curve of her butt.
She glances at him, amused by his interest and the fact that he's too hammered to do anything but look. The nightshirt lands in a crumpled heap over his head this time, and all he sees is a cameo glimpse of her black unsexy sports bra before the hoodie takes away that too.
"Quinnie," shouts a woman's voice, banging through the house and the inside of Puck's painful head. "Are you ready?"
"YEAH, MOM, ALMOST - BE RIGHT DOWN," Quinnie yells back, with more vehemence than strictly necessary (or even kind.) Puck closes his eyes at the renewed pain and falls on his back, wishing he could just die right here. He opens his eyes again only when he realises she's very close, crouching almost right over him.
"Remember," she tells him almost kindly, upside-down, "don't break a hip."
A flash of a smile, and then she disappears, the door of her room closing quietly after her.
Puck, the bastard, is sitting on their porch, his dad's old truck parked in the middle of the driveway in clear view. He's wearing sunglasses, and the hood of his jacket is pulled over his head, so her mother almost mistakes him for a hobo CIA agent, but he grins, immune to the daggers Quinn is shooting him from her eyes.
It takes five minutes to re-establish to her mother that yes, this is the boy who knocked her up, yes ma'am, he's reformed, and he's only interested in being Quinn's friend (her cheeks burn with humiliation and anger, trying not to think of how all her boyfriends end up falling in love with Rachel Berry anyway.)
At least her mother won't let them go anywhere further than the living room couch.
"What do you want?" she asks him tiredly, fiddling with her glass of juice. His is untouched, set on a coaster on the glass table in an uncharacteristic display of domestic tact. "I gave you your car keys back already."
Puck takes a deep breath, not sure of how to do this. "I was thinking about what you said last night." As he expects, her face turns a dark shade of furious red.
"I said a lot of things last night," she says coldly. I can't believe what you did to my body. "A lot of which I don't remember now."
"Okay." He shrugs, knowing he's not going to push this. "I was just thinking about it, like in my own head." He tries to shift closer to her, but she pulls away, she's not letting him get away with the same trick from last night. "I was talking to Rachel, and," he doesn't miss the sudden ice in the room, "she tells me Shelby Corcoran, ex-coach of Vocal Adrenaline? She's living in New York."
"I know who Shelby Corcoran is, Puck."
"You wanna go visit her?"
Quinn is smart, so smart her vicious tongue gives him whiplash, but she hasn't seen this one coming. Seven months later, she hasn't seen this one coming. He tries to touch her, palm hovering over her shaking hand, but she stares at him, shock and something worse mixed underneath that wide-eyed naked façade.
"We could take my truck," he goes on quietly, slowly explaining what had come to him in a rush earlier that morning when he'd been standing alone in her bedroom again. "We'll take turns driving, listen to cheesy roadtrip music. It'll be fun, and you've always wanted to go to New York on your own."
He doesn't know what the magic word is, but it finally snaps her out of it. "You have a girlfriend," she sneers. "You're one relationship unqualified from going on a roadtrip with me."
Puck flops back on the couch and grins; it widens only when her eyes narrow further. The fact that she's objecting to it means that she's at least thinking about it, coming up with reasons why this is a bad idea, which means she sees it as an idea. "My girlfriend could kick your ass in a catfight any day, Milf."
Her eyebrows nearly disappear into her hairline, and she kicks him. Puck barely flinches, criss-crossing his legs over hers, trapping them in place. "You're on," she seethes. "We're going, and only because I'd just like to see her try it."
-- finis --
