12. Contempt - P/R - M
Title: Red Flag. [Contempt]
Rating: Puck is being Puck. So M. Swearing, sexy thoughts.
Word Count: 1, 058 words.
Spoilers: No. Unless I can predict the FUTURE.
Summary: Rachel is annoyed that she didn’t get the solo vocals in a song, and Puck just loves stirring the pot to watch her react. (Inspired by smc-27 Go read her Puckleberry!)
Rachel’s cheeks were glowing red as the rest of the Glee members just watched. her No one wanted to interrupt the rampage that was Rachel; especially when she was being denied a lead that she was born to play. Puck heard something about Streisand, something about Funny Girl… He actually wasn’t paying attention to the words coming out of her mouth.
Puck was mostly just fixated on her urgency. She was practically begging for the part.
Fill in a few blanks here and there, and Puck could happily just sit and smirk as she rambled. He watched her speak, sure, it was fun to watch her get flustered and his mind honestly could do wonders with just visual aids.
As her tirade came to an end, Puck shifted in his seat. He pretended to look offended as the others members fought back. Puck waited for an open moment, his eyes darting between Tina and Rachel.
“We could settle this the old fashioned way? Foxy boxing,” he grinned, earning a few nods from Matt and Mike. Mr. Schuester looked annoyed by the suggestion, but Puck ignored it. He had another tangent for his brain whilst everyone verbally duke it out.
Oh shit, when did Santana’s skirt get so fucking tiny? He watched her strut out of the room with Brittany in tow. Matt and Mike followed, along with Quinn and Finn. Really, it was only him and Rachel left by the time his brain caught up with everything. That sucked for him, as he was stuck in silence with a fuming Rachel. The girl was tiny, but she was fucking scary when she needed to be.
“What was that?” Puck finally questioned with a frown as he watched Artie wheel out behind Tina.
Rachel blinked, “What was what?”
“You being a diva? Hello, did you not hear your-fuckin’-self when you laid it into Mr. Schuester for giving Tina the lead?” Puck questioned with his shoulders sagging from sheer boredom. And yes, he was hypocritical; he hadn’t listened to Rachel either. What he did know was that this right here?
This was a red flag to Rachel.
Rachel pouted, her eyes narrowing and widening at him in some stupid confusing display of emotions. There’s no point to storming out, not yet, she resolved.
His point? Totally irrelevant. It’s stupid, truthfully. She knows it.
Rachel Berry wasn’t a diva.
Divas were unprofessional. Attention-seeking. Childish.
Rachel simpers at feeling of her stomach twitching. The word diva sparked a few additional insults. She wasn’t childish. She was a mature sixteen-year-old woman. She was a performer. She was a team player. She was - she was… cornered. “I’m not a diva,” she winced, her arms tightly crossed.
“Right, ‘cause crying in the middle of rehearsals because Tina - a girl who never gets a fuckin’ break - earns a solo,” Puck snorts, almost unable to believe what he is seeing. Rachel Berry pretending she wasn’t a diva. Rachel. Fucking. Berry. The girl who was the epitome of a diva from the age of negative nine months, standing in front of him whilst trying to deny her starlet ways. (Sometimes he liked to use a few big words, so suck it. He was failing Math not English.) “Nah. Of course you’re not a diva.”
“I didn’t cry! And, I just don’t feel that she’s ready, alright? Vocally, she’s just a bit weak and her confidence on stage is minimal at best. She’ll make a total fool of herself in front of everyone and -”
“What do you care?” Puck questioned. And, judging by her expression, she didn’t take his question sincerely. “No, seriously; you couldn’t care less if someone else looks stupid. How does it affect you?”
“Well!” Rachel huffed, her hands tightly clenched by her sides, “I actually do care if Tina makes an idiot out of herself! If I’m on stage with her I - oh,” Rachel stopped, her cheeks tingling. She wasn’t sure if all the yelling had made her feel that sensation or if she had actually started listening to herself.
Guilt? Probably.
“You don’t have any faith in us, do you?” Puck pressed further, honestly dumbstruck by how stupid Berry was being. It was easier to berate her if he ignored she had a first name; that she had any identity at all, actually. “We’re a team, yeah. How are we going to take Regionals if you’re acting like a primadonna?”
“Of course I have faith in you - uhm. The team,” she clarified.
“Then stop fuckin’ acting like you’re the top of the group. You can sing, yeah, but so could April.”
Rachel’s eyes flew wide, her teeth bared in anger. Puck wasn’t sure he liked this expression. (It was kinda scary, and not in her usual crazy-hot way.) Maybe he’d made the mistake of comparing one girl to another; big deal. In the most Berry-like fashion she could muster in her anger, she stormed out of the room leaving a very content Puck.
Since joining Glee, Puck had become friends with people he never imagined. In particular, he’d found Tina’s presence comforting. She was a girl he’d never think twice about sleeping with. (Because, yeah, he thought about it once but the girl could bite; shit, she could bite hard. And not in any kind of erotic way he could enjoy.) Puck grimaced, reminding himself to never let Tina near his forearm again whilst making sexual innuendo.
He finally decided that, no, hanging back in the choir room on a Friday afternoon wasn’t what he wanted to do. He wasn’t Berry.
Who, he noted as he walked to his car, hadn’t gone far.
“I thought you stormed off?” Puck called out in amusement.
Rachel turned and looked at him with utter contempt.
Puck actually flinched. The girl was scary.
“What did I do?”
Rachel hitched up her bag (which made her skirt rise up just enough for him to smirk), “You implied that April was better than me.”
“Well, she let me touch her boobs.”
Rachel, who was already angry, was just looking at him with utter contempt. “You slept with her?”
“Uh not what I said, but yeah, me and like… half the football team. Really old news, Berry. You didn’t know?” Puck seemed amused. The angrier she got, the more amused he got. It was a dangerous mix. Though, he could have sworn she looked - jealous? He laughed. “And you care?”
“She’s - old! Exceedingly so! I’m surprised you didn’t -” Rachel faded off, her lips pursed shut. She knew there was no point saying anything further, mostly because Puck was now convinced she had some undying, secret crush on her. Wasn’t he mad at her still for being horrible to Tina?
“Look, not that I’m not having loads of fun or anything,” he paused, “but I have shit to do. I’m sure you don’t, but y’know. I have friends, you don’t, blah, blah, blah,” Puck examined his wrist for a moment (wishing he actually had a watch. He was pretty sure Santana stole it.)
Rachel resumed her contemptuous expression, her arms crossed. “Of course, don’t let me keep you,” she tried not to sigh, but it passed her lips despite her strain. She had things to do - she did! Things like upload her daily MySpace video. And other things of importance, she assured herself.
“Later Berry,” he waved, turning on his heel toward the school doors.
“Punk.”
He smiled a little more. She couldn’t even muster another insult. It was kind of pathetic, the poor thing. (Not that he actually cared how she felt. It was just fun to patronize her in his head.)
Though he did kind of care about how Tina felt (they were sort of friends - in a boring, ‘lets go get coffee’ kind of way), he mostly just enjoyed seeing Rachel with a ‘contemptuous scowl’. Those were her word, not his. The way her lips curled up, the subtle kink in her eyebrow and how she’d cross her arms. She was pretty flat, but what she did have was only helped by her angry stance. It was about as animalistic as she ever got, especially if you told her she sucked at practise.
Puck just knew it was trying to hide her clear need to fuck him.
He didn’t blame her, though.
He is pretty much the stud of the school. And he knew if she could hear his thoughts, her expression would be so much more lethal than the watery attempts at contempt. His smile was basically ear to ear now, his eyes averted to the ground.
She was just hot when she was mad, he admitted to himself. He was a dude; he could think chicks were hot without actually liking them. Go fucking figure. He was about to go screw Santana anyway.
And he definitely didn’t think of Rachel Berry whilst getting some heated, angry sex from Santana that night. He didn’t pretend it was her moaning his name, and he definitely didn’t slip up and called Santana something else.
That’d just be fucked up, right?
Right.