All We Have Is Right Now
Title: All We Have Is Right Now
Chapter: 1/1
Pairings: Puck/Rachel, Mike/Quinn
Word Count: 7,300
Summary: "We should go on a road trip." Puck, Rachel, Mike, and Quinn go on a road trip, one last adventure before they have to move on and grow up.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Puck is sprawled out in an oversized armchair in Rachel Berry's basement when his summer takes a decidedly unexpected turn. Unexpected even if it is his idea. And yes, that totally makes sense.
"We should go on a road trip," he says, talking over the music that's playing.
Mike, lying flat on his back on the floor, lifts his head to look at Puck. Quinn does the same from her spot on the sofa. The four of them aren't doing anything, just soaking up the air conditioning and hanging out together because everyone else is gone or busy.
"I'm serious," he says. "In like, two months, you're all leaving, and we might not see each other ever again."
"Don't say that," Rachel interjects.
"We should go do something instead of just sitting around here until then," Puck goes on, ignoring her. And yeah, he thought of it thirty seconds ago, but he really does think it's a good idea.
"I'm not su--"
"I think it sounds like fun," Quinn interrupts Rachel. Mike looks just as surprised by her reaction as Puck feels. "I'm sick of Lima. I've been sick of Lima for three years," she adds under her breath.
Puck looks at Mike expectantly, watching him prop himself up on his elbows. "I'm in," Mike says. "It's not like I have anything else planned." Puck isn't really surprised. The guy hasn't done much of anything since he and Tina broke up.
Rachel's eyes widen slightly when she realizes that they're all looking at her, waiting for a response. It only takes a second for her expression to change, her eyes lighting up as she smiles brightly. "Where are we going?"
*
Quinn knows they're an odd foursome. At least, her presence in the group makes things a bit more awkward, given her history with both Rachel and Puck. If it wasn't for Mike, she's sure she would have backed out when Rachel laid out a map of the United States on the basement floor and started planning out a loose route for them to follow, drawing lines with colored pencils and adding tiny, star-shaped stickers to mark potential stops. Instead, she volunteered her new SUV for the trip.
Frankly, there's no way that this trip can be the worst thing she does this year, so why not?
"You're sure you want to do this?" her mom asks the morning that they're all leaving.
Quinn resists the urge to roll her eyes. "We've already had this conversation." She slips another paperback into her satchel just in case she finishes the two she's already packed, then turns to face her mother, hovering there in her bedroom doorway. "And if I was going to change my mind, I wouldn't do it an hour before we were supposed to leave."
A smile tugs at the corner of her mother's lips. "There's five hundred dollars in cash folded into a map of Connecticut in your glove box," she says. "Just in case."
"Mom--"
"Use the Visa for gas and hotels," Judy goes on, interrupting Quinn's protest before she can get it out. "That way I'll get points for it. And don't eat junk the entire time. Stop at a grocery store and get an apple once in a while."
"Mom--"
"I put a case of water and some snacks in the back of your car, but since you're going with those boys, all of that will be gone before you get to Kentucky. And make sure that you check the air press--"
"Mom." Quinn feels impossibly fond of her mother right now, watching her stand there with her lips pressed together and her eyes wide, like she's waiting for Quinn to say something nasty. And there was a time when that's exactly what would have happened. Instead, Quinn closes the space between them and pulls her mom into a hug. "I'll be safe and careful and nothing bad will happen. I promise. You don't have to worry."
"Of course I do," Judy says, holding Quinn at arm's length. "I'm your mom."
Standing in the driveway an hour later, Quinn watches similar conversations happening between Rachel and her dads and Mike and his mom. Puck comes to stand beside her, running a hand over his stupid hair. "My mom did that last night," he says quietly.
Quinn grins up at him. "This morning."
He considers the scene for a moment, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head. "Ten more minutes?"
"At least."
He lets out a long suffering sigh and shuffles around the back of the car to poke at the bags that have already been loaded.
*
"No," Puck says from the back seat when he hears the opening notes of "Tonight" ring through the speakers.
Rachel twists in her seat to face him. "It's West Side Story, Noah," she says.
"I know what it's from, Rachel. I'm sick of West Side Story."
"How can you be sick of West Side Story?" she asks, eyes wide, incredulous. "You were in West Side Story."
"We were all in West Side Story," Quinn interjects, not glancing up from the magazine she's been thumbing through since they stopped for gas at the Kentucky-Tennessee state line.
"That's why I'm sick of it," Puck tells Rachel, ignoring Quinn. "Pick something else. Please," he adds as an afterthought.
Rachel purses her lips and turns to fiddle with her iPod. When "Memory" starts playing, Puck rolls his eyes. Mike chuckles from the driver's seat when Rachel leans over to turn up the volume, and when Puck looks at Quinn, she just lifts an eyebrow as if to say, 'See what you did?'
Puck rescues himself with his iPod.
*
They stop at Waffle House for dinner the first day, despite Rachel's protests.
Quinn's stomach is growling when the waitress starts sitting plates in front of them, the aroma of waffles and bacon and melted cheese wafting up from the table nearly making her mouth water.
Across the table, Rachel pours her tiny box of Cheerios into a bowl and adds a bit of apple juice. "I'm going to starve on this trip," she says, resigned.
*
"Oh, my God," Quinn gasps, jerking Puck out of his doze.
It's bright when he opens his eyes. At least, it's brighter than it was when he closed them, which he assumes means that they're really in Atlanta now, the lights from the city itself illuminating the inside of the car. The clock on the dash tells him it's after midnight. Rachel is driving, and Quinn is glaring at her from the passenger seat.
"Pull over," Quinn orders, her voice flat.
"I can't pull over here." There's a hysterical edge to Rachel's voice. "It's not safe."
"Take the next exit and stop the car, Rachel."
Puck glances over at Mike, who looks as sleepy and clueless as he feels, and decides to say nothing. After a moment, Mike ventures a quiet, "What's going on?"
"Rachel is trying to get us killed," Quinn answers tersely.
"He was in my blind spot!"
"That's why you're supposed to look before you switch lanes, Rachel!"
When Rachel parks the car at the edge of a truck stop parking lot, they all four pile out. Quinn is mad, Rachel has tears in her eyes, and Puck doesn't know who's driving the rest of the way to the hotel, but he's ready to be there.
"I didn't mean to scare you," Rachel says, looking at Quinn across the hood of the car. "It's understandable that you have some trauma after your accident, but--"
"Shut up," Quinn snaps. "This is not post-accident trauma. This is you not being able to drive in traffic."
"I'll drive," Puck volunteers before anyone can say anything else. Quinn has that look on her face that she gets before she says something unnecessarily hurtful, and Rachel is about three seconds from crying. This is one of those situations that needs to be taken care of before it gets out of hand. He nudges Rachel toward the back door, sliding his hand across her back before climbing in front and adjusting the seat. He reaches across the console to squeeze Quinn's thigh - just a gentle, reassuring touch - before heading back out onto the freeway.
The car is silent save for Rachel's little sniffles coming from the backseat, muffled when Quinn turns up the radio so the Keri Hilson song playing becomes more than a murmur in the background. When he looks in the rearview mirror, Puck sees Mike rubbing a comforting hand over Rachel's shoulder, and he really hopes that this isn't the way this trip is going to go.
At breakfast the next morning, the girls act totally normal again - normal for Quinn and Rachel, at least. They've kissed and made up, allaying his fears and putting everything back onto an even keel.
Rachel doesn't drive into city traffic again for the rest of their trip.
*
Mike dances in the car.
Quinn really shouldn't be surprised, but it's impressive that he's still able to make moving around while wearing a seatbelt look like dancing. Even when it's done to country music, which Rachel and Puck insist on playing the entire way to Nashville after spending their two days in Atlanta listening to music by that city's natives.
Pop and locking to Johnny Cash has to qualify as a special skill.
"How do you even do that?" she demands, watching the way that he jolts his chest in time with the lyrics of 'Ring of Fire.'
He grins. "You want me to teach you how to isolate, Quinn?"
"Yes, I do."
It's the most ridiculous dance lesson she's ever had - and she was twelve years old in beginner's ballet classes full of four-year-olds and attempted to learn wheelchair choreography for glee club numbers just a few months ago - but Mike sincerely tries to teach her how to move her body like he moves his. His fingertips are warm when he taps them against her sternum, telling her to 'pull from here', his eyes bright when he watches her efforts
"You're better than you think," he insists when she gives up. She feels a little breathless, but she can't stop giggling, even when Puck mumbles something about listening to the same song over and over from the front seat. "I'm pretty sure you would actually be able to do it if you were standing."
She looks at him dubiously, shaking her head when he smiles brightly.
When they stop at the hotel that night, she proves him wrong.
Quinn can't remember the last time she had so much fun being bad at something.
*
Puck's pretty sure that he could live in Nashville.
There's like, a vibe that he can feel as soon as they drive into the city even though he sucks at trying to put it into words. It's relaxed, like no one's in a hurry to get anywhere, but there are still places to go. It's totally the city that country music built, down home and not at all pretentious, a little bit conservative but lacking the constant feeling of judgment that he's gotten used to in Lima.
He files all of that information away for later.
"Hey, I have something for you guys."
They spent the morning at the Grand Ol' Opry, and now they're at a restaurant that Quinn read about on some travel website that supposedly has the best cobbler in Nashville. The dessert is really good, and Rachel's and Quinn's mouths are so full that they aren't talking, so this seems like a good time to do this.
"What is it?" Rachel asks. Beside her, Quinn is watching him with a suspicious look that he ignores.
Puck digs the cards out of his wallet and sets them in front of each of them without a word.
"Is this," Rachel leans forward and drops her voice to a whisper, "a fake ID?" Puck smirks and takes another bite of blackberry cobbler.
Mike pulls his driver's license out of his wallet, holding the two cards side by side to compare. "It's actually pretty good," he says. "Hey, I'm twenty-one."
"Me too," Quinn says. "But you could've used a better picture."
"I've seen your driver's license, Q. I could've picked worse. Fuck," he bites out when she kicks him under the table, the hard edge of her sandal connecting with his shin.
"What if we get caught?" Rachel asks, still whispering.
Puck shrugs. "They take the ID and kick us out. Not much to lose. Look," he says when he sees her doubt, "we are going to New Orleans, and I'll be damned if I don't get to drink on Bourbon Street."
"You do know that Mardi Gras is in February, right?"
Puck glares at Quinn. "So not the point."
"I think it'll be cool," Mike says, obviously trying to defuse the situation. He's done that a lot on this trip.
Quinn slips her new ID into her wallet. "I want more cobbler," she says, looking around for the waitress, the conversation going on at the table forgotten.
"Fine," Rachel says. "But if I end up jail for this, I will never forgive you."
Puck reaches across the table to take her hand, looking her straight in the eye when he assures her, "I'll be there to bail you out."
*
They take a bit of a detour in Mississippi so they can spend a day on the beach. The humidity is oppressive this far south, and Quinn's hair is so limp that she gives up trying to do anything more than plait the strands away from her face. It's beautiful though, pale sand leading to blue water, the diamond-sharp sunlight reflecting so that she's forced to squint even behind her sunglasses.
A little way down the beach, Puck scoops Rachel up and carries her to the water, her squeals ringing out over the waves right up until he drops her into the surf. Quinn chuckles from her place on the beach, content to sit and watch until she's feeling more sure of herself. She hasn't ever really been comfortable in a bathing suit, and now there are scars from the accident to deal with. There's one on her upper thigh, where a piece of hard molded plastic from her car door tore through the side of her dress and left a curved cut a few inches long. Now, months later, there is a raised scar, the slightly puckered flesh shiny and discolored. No one has seen it yet, save for her mother and her doctors. She isn't hiding it exactly, but she isn't really letting anyone see it either.
Rachel is the one who notices it first, when she comes to sit on the towel next to Quinn's, her hair dripping cool water over the tops of Quinn's feet.
"Does it hurt?" she asks, gesturing to Quinn's hip. The scar looks darker now, a more angry red, reacting to being exposed to the sun even with the SPF 50 she applied.
"No," Quinn answers, brushing a self-conscious hand over her skin. "Those were just flesh wounds."
Rachel presses her lips together for a moment, looking out across the beach before bringing her gaze back to Quinn's face. "Quinn, I just want to tell you again--"
"I swear to god, if you apologize for the accident again, I won't talk to you until we get to Illinois." It's a significant threat; they're planning stops in three more states before then.
Rachel's eyebrows tick up. "I was going to say that I'm glad you agreed to come on this trip," she says, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, "because it's given us a chance to really become friends."
"Oh."
"I guess threats are just a part of friendship with Quinn Fabray I should get used to," she goes on, not even trying to hide her smile any longer.
"I'm going to swim." Quinn pushes to her feet, ignoring the almost smug expression on Rachel's face.
She and Mike jump the waves as they roll to the shore, hands grasped tight. She forgets to be self-conscious, and at the end of the day her nose and the tops of her shoulders are pink despite her best efforts with the sunblock. She decides, when she's smoothing aloe vera lotion on her shoulders in the backseat of her car, that the handful of freckles she might get will be worth it.
*
"Dance with me, Noah."
Rachel slips her arms around his neck from behind, her lips next to his ear, the stack of bracelets on her wrist making musical little noises. Puck wonders just how many drinks she's had while he wasn't paying attention.
"I don't dance."
She drops into the chair beside him, pouting. One of her hands is still resting on his bicep, her fingers warm through the sleeve of his tee shirt. "You're a member of a national champion show choir. You dance."
"Not like this." Not in a New Orleans jazz club where they're underage. "Dance with Mike."
"I already danced with Mike," she answers. "Mike wants to dance with Quinn. And I want to dance with you."
Puck takes a second to just look at her. She's obviously drunk, her hair a wavy mess and her lip gloss long since smudged away. She's also stupidly hot in a flippy little skirt and a low-cut halter top, sweat glistening on her skin.
"What are the chances of me getting out of this?"
She smiles brilliantly, knowing that she's already won. "Zero. You have zero chance of getting out of it," she answers, already tugging him up out of his seat and toward the dance floor.
It's fun, which isn't really a surprise. Rachel's a pain in the ass sometimes, but she does know how to let loose and have fun, especially after a drink or six. He's thought about how fun she is a lot on this trip, even with the excessive showtunes and the way she makes them stop at roadside produce stands and farmers' markets so she can exclaim over tomatoes and cucumbers and strawberries.
She slides her little hands up his arms and over his neck, sways her hips and presses her body to his. His hand slips beneath the hem of her shirt, the skin at the small of her back smooth and hot under his fingers. Her head tips back when she laughs, and he realizes, all at once but certainly not for the first time, that Rachel Berry is sexy as fuck.
He's thought a lot about how she's sexy on this trip too.
Puck lets her hold his hand when they're walking back to their hotel after last call. Mike and Quinn are walking ahead of them with their arms linked together; he hears Quinn's laugh ring out over the sounds of the street more than once.
"You were right," Rachel says out of nowhere. She bumps her hip into his when he raises a questioning eyebrow. "About the IDs," she stage whispers. "Tonight was a lot of fun."
He smirks. "I'm always right when it comes to doing things you think you shouldn't."
"Yes, you are," she murmurs, looking up at him from beneath her eyelashes. It makes him want to kiss her, which is about seven different kinds of wrong. Sure, she and Finn aren't together any more, but it isn't as simple as that. Puck isn't sure if he and Rachel will still be friends once she gets to New York and he does whatever, but he doesn't want to fuck things up before she even goes. He's pretty sure that's what'll happen if he goes there with her. It might not be worth it.
However much he wants to go there.
They get to the hotel before he can even begin to decipher the shit in his head. Rachel kisses his cheek, lingering there while she says a quiet goodnight, then disappears into the room she's sharing with Quinn.
*
Quinn hates bell peppers and she isn't a huge fan of seafood, so the food in New Orleans doesn't do much for her. Memphis barbecue is another story.
She expects Rachel to say something about the poor animals that died to make their meal, but she keeps her mouth shut, working her way through a plate of side dishes, at least a couple of which Quinn is pretty sure aren't vegan. Save for bitching about stops at Waffle House, Rachel hasn't said much about her diet, and has even tried a few things that definitely aren't vegan. Quinn's impressed, but she hasn't said anything just in case pointing it out turns it into a topic of conversation.
"Elvis was an icon," Rachel says, brandishing her fork, a piece of fried okra hanging precariously from the tines.
"Well, yeah," Mike agrees, "but he was also cool as hell."
Quinn can't help smiling as she glances over at him. It came as a surprise, learning that Mike is an Elvis fan, but he sang along with every song on Puck's Elvis playlist on the drive here, and he's the one who mentioned Graceland back when they were first planning the trip in Rachel's basement.
Graceland is simultaneously the tackiest and most fascinating place Quinn has ever seen.
And she's really happy that she gets to watch Mike enjoy it.
"Elvis was one crazy dude," Mike comments when they're walking through the jungle room. Quinn ignores the glare that one of the women walking past them shoots in their direction. (She's wearing a fanny pack. Really.) "But like, crazy talented."
Quinn glances over her shoulder, making sure that Rachel isn't within earshot. "You know, people are going to be saying that about Rachel Berry in fifty years, and we're going to be able to say we knew her back when she was wearing animal sweaters and forcing people to be in horrible music videos with her."
Mike snorts out a laugh. "Do you think there'll be mannequins?"
Quinn nods seriously. "Oh, for sure. And photos. We'll be in them. Maybe they'll interview us for the glee club exhibit."
"You know she'd love this idea, right?"
That's exactly why it's so much fun.
*
Puck is still sleeping when someone comes knocking on the door of the hotel room he's sharing with Mike on their last morning in Memphis. Mike is in the shower, forcing Puck to roll out of bed and answer the door.
Rachel blinks at the sight of him, bleary-eyed and in boxers, but gathers herself quickly. "I think we should go to Branson."
"Branson," he repeats, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Why?"
"Why not?"
Puck scoffs, moving back into the room and flopping down on the bed. He's not surprised when Rachel follows, sitting close enough that her thigh is pressed against his. Her skin is bare thanks to her little shorts, smooth and distractingly warm. "It'll add a day to the trip, but it really isn't that far out of the way, and then we can say that we've been."
"The fuck is in Branson?" he asks, voice muffled by the pillow. In the bathroom, the water stops running, and he hopes that Mike comes out sooner rather than later so he can entertain Rachel and give Puck a chance to escape before he reacts to her closeness any more than he already is.
It's not like anyone could blame him. It's morning and there's a girl in his bed.
"There are shows and a theme park, and there's a Titanic museum." He makes an impatient noise. A fucking Titanic museum? Really? "It's iconic, Noah."
"What's iconic?" Mike asks, finally emerging from the bathroom. Puck rolls off the bed, pushing his way into the bathroom to avoid taking part in the conversation. And to debate between taking a cold shower or just giving in and jerking off.
*
Branson is underwhelming. The area is pretty, yes, and interesting in a Midwestern kitsch sort of way, but the traffic is hideous and the wonderful silliness of the Dixie Stampede barely makes up for it.
Quinn doesn't mind that they went out of their way. She has three drinks with dinner, then calls shotgun when Mike volunteers to drive the leg to St. Louis. Puck and Rachel are asleep in the back before they even make it to the interstate, Puck's head lolling back and Rachel curled up in a little ball despite her seatbelt.
"He's going to bitch about his neck all day tomorrow," Quinn says, pulling her leg up into the seat so she can turn to face Mike. She should be tired, but she's the sort of wide awake that only happens when she's been drinking.
"He snores," is Mike's response.
"I know."
It's too dark for Quinn to read his expression when he looks over at her. "Right. I forget that you lived wi...together," he says, making it sound better than it was. Usually that would make her impatient, but it doesn't tonight. Possibly that's the rum. "You're actually friends now though, right?"
"We are. What we did was a thousand different kinds of stupid," she says, pushing her hair behind her ear, "but he really isn't a bad guy."
He's quiet for a while, signalling his way into the left lane to pass a tractor trailer before saying, "Do you think..." and then trailing off.
"What?" Quinn prompts.
He glances at her. "Would you take it back if you could? The whole pregnancy thing?"
"I'm supposed to say no," she answers after a moment. She toys with her necklace, twisting the chain around her neck until the clasp hits the pendant, then back again. "I love Beth. But honestly? If I could go back and not get pregnant with my boyfriend's best friend when I was sixteen?" She smiles wryly to herself. "Yes, I'd take it back."
"Do you ever wish you would have kept her?" He practically whispers the question, like he isn't sure he should be asking it at all.
"Yes. But that's even more selfish than wishing that I could take it all back," she tells him. It's the most truthful she's ever been when someone has asked her questions like these, but it feels...right.
Again, possibly the rum.
Except she thinks that more than the alcohol, it's because she's talking to Mike.
"I think that's okay." Quinn strains to see his face in the light coming from the dashboard. "Everybody has things they would change, right? And sometimes it's okay to be selfish."
"You aren't."
"Quinn, I declined admission to Harvard to be a dancer."
"That's not the same."
He shifts his hands on the steering wheel. "Maybe not," he concedes. "But that doesn't mean that I'm never selfish."
Quinn leans her head back against the seat, trying to think of the last time that she saw Mike Chang do something selfish. She falls asleep before she can come up with anything.
*
"Reptile house," Mike states seriously.
Rachel wrinkles her nose. "Wouldn't you rather see the polar bears?"
"Are there polar bears in the reptile house?" Quinn asks meanly.
"Don't be a bitch, Q."
Puck thinks he's too old to be at a zoo without his sister or Beth or some other little ankle biter, but he got ignored when he suggested the tour of the Budweiser brewery. Whatever.
He moves to stand beside Rachel. "You guys go to the reptile house," he says, looking at Mike. "We'll go see the polar bears."
Quinn rolls her eyes, but says nothing as Rachel starts rattling off facts about polar bears, letting Mike lead her away with his hand on the small of her back.
"Let's go, Rach," Puck says, interrupting her spiel about ice floes or something. "The polar bears are waiting."
They walk in silence for a couple hundred yards, following the signs that point to the polar bear habitat while dodging two different families with a total of three strollers. Puck shoves his wistful thoughts to the back of his mind, deliberately checking out the ass of a mom carrying a toddler instead of looking at the little girl's blonde curls.
"You don't care about the polar bears at all, do you?" Rachel asks, breaking Puck's line of thought along with the silence. He smirks down at her.
"Nope."
She smiles. "You know, I don't take Quinn's comments personally any more," she says. "I don't think she means them that way any more, actually."
"She doesn't," he confirms. If Quinn still hated Rachel, she never would have agreed to come on this trip, but besides that, Puck can tell when Quinn's being a bitch and when she's just being Quinn.
Rachel grabs his hand when they near the tunnel at the polar bear habitat. "I want to see them swim," she insists, tugging him with her down the little hill. He goes along without protest; he really doesn't mind following Rachel's lead.
*
It would be like crawling into a washing machine, Quinn thinks when she sees the little capsule she's supposed to ride to get to the top of the Gateway Arch. Her throat constricts, and even though it's cool down here, she can feel the sweat start to prickle at the back of her neck.
"I can't do this," she says simply, meeting Puck's eyes briefly before turning heel, gathering her hair in one hand to get it off her neck as she heads back up the steps into the museum space.
"Wait, Quinn!"
Mike is jogging toward her when she turns. She drops her hair with a little sigh. "You don't have to stay with me."
He shrugs lazily. "I've been up before." He watches her for a second, then grins. "You wanna get McFlurries at the floating McDonald's?"
While Puck and Rachel enjoy the view from the Arch, Mike and Quinn sit on the steps that lead down to the Mississippi River, trading bites of ice cream and making up stories about the people around them.
*
"What's up with you and Quinn?"
Puck just asks. He doesn't know how to do it without sounding like a nosy asshole or a girl, so he just goes for it. Quinn and Rachel are in the bathroom - together, because they are girls - and he and Mike are waiting for them to get back so they can decide exactly how they want to spend the rest of the night.
Mike lifts an eyebrow, sitting back in his seat. "What's up with you and Rachel?" he shoots back.
"We're friends," Puck answers, even as he blinks stupidly. The question catches him off guard. "We're all friends. And besides, Finn--"
"Enlisted," Mike interrupts, "and broke up with Rachel and told her to go to New York alone." He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. "And friends don't look at friends the way you look at Rachel."
Puck only needs a second to say, "Like how you look at Quinn?"
"Okay, yeah," Mike says after a minute. "I like her. But we're going to be home in like, three days, and then we're going to be in totally different places."
Puck shoots him a pointed look, but says nothing else as they're rejoined by the girls.
*
"I love Chicago," Quinn announces, dropping into the chair beside Mike.
"Yeah?" he chuckles.
"Yes. I also love gin." She takes a sip of her drink to drive the point home, grinning around her straw when Mike laughs.
"Chicago looks good on you, I think."
"I agree."
So Quinn's a little drunk. They're all a little drunk. (Actually, if the way that she can't stop giggling as Puck moves her around the dance floor is any indication, Rachel is very drunk, not that it matters.) She's on vacation with people who she likes and trusts, so why shouldn't she be a little drunk? They're young; now is the time when she's supposed to be doing things like this.
There are lots of things 'like this,' she thinks, putting her hand on Mike's leg under the table. "Hey," he says quietly, meeting her eyes.
"I don't love you," she says, and Mike's eyebrows come together just a tiny bit, "but I like you a lot."
"You're drunk," he says quietly, but he doesn't make any effort to move away from her when she nods. "You're cute though."
She leans into him. "Is it because I'm drunk?" she asks. He shakes his head, his eyes dropping to her lips. She tilts her head a little. "Is it because you're drunk?"
"Quinn--"
She cuts him off with a kiss. It's just a gentle brush of her lips against his, just enough to make him stop talking - stop thinking - and take a breath.
Then he's kissing her in earnest, one hand cupping the side of her neck while the other curves around her waist, pulling her closer to him. It's the kiss she didn't know she wanted, with his chest warm under her palm and the taste of beer on his lips. She sinks into it, the sounds of the bar around them fading to a dull hum.
"About fucking time," Puck declares, bringing Quinn back into the present when Mike pulls away.
She glares at him, sliding her hand up to rest on Mike's shoulder. "Don't you have something better to do?"
He holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I just came to see if you needed more drinks. If you want me to go, I'll go."
Quinn widens her eyes. "Go."
Puck grins wolfishly as he rises from the table, slapping Mike hard on the back when he walks away.
"I'm glad you're not that mean to me," Mike says when she looks up at him, his fingers moving distractingly against her skin at her hairline.
"You don't deserve it. He does."
Mike just lets out a hum before kissing her again.
*
"I think you two are cute," Rachel says at breakfast the next morning. Mike turns red, Quinn glares, and Puck smothers the laugh that threatens to bubble up out of his chest, shoving a huge bite of pancake into his mouth.
*
"You're going to be back here in just a few weeks," Rachel says to Mike when they're waiting for their lunch at one of the dozens of restaurants that claims to have the best deep dish pizza in Chicago. "For good."
Mike nods. "My apartment is like a dozen blocks from here."
Quinn takes a sip of her Diet Coke to give her hands something to do. Across the table, Puck fiddles with his fork. Mike's fingers brush the side of Quinn's thigh, just below the hem of her skirt, under the table where no one else can see. She moves into his touch a little, an acknowledgment. Talking about the end of the summer and what comes after has been taboo during this trip, and Rachel just broke it. It's...uncomfortable.
The waiter delivers their pizza (and Rachel's salad), effectively ending the conversation before it really gets started.
*
On their last night in Chicago - the last night of their trip - they go out to another bar, this one suggested by a group of girls Quinn and Rachel apparently befriended in a bathroom somewhere during the day. It has that relaxed dive bar feeling without being grimy, and it looks to Puck like the clientele is mostly made up of college-aged kids. Rachel spends nearly half an hour choosing songs at the jukebox ("Trust me, Noah, these people will appreciate a well-chosen soundtrack to their evening just as much as we will," Rachel insists - and that's before her third tequila sunrise.), and Quinn teaches the three of them how to play darts properly.
It's a totally unremarkable night, right up until Rachel corners him in the hallway outside of the bathroom.
"Why haven't you kissed me?" she asks without preamble. Puck feels his mouth open and close, like an ugly fish out of water, but no sound comes out. "You haven't even tried."
"What are you talking about?"
She huffs out an exasperated breath. "The entire time we've been friends, you've always taken every opportunity to try to kiss me. Every time I've been single. Even when I wasn't single," she adds, her voice a little shrill.
"Are you drunk?" he asks, unsure of where this is coming from. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he knows it was the wrong thing to say.
"I am not drunk," she snaps indignantly. "I want to know why you don't want me."
He continues to gape at her, but for a totally different reason. "Who said I didn't want you?"
She blinks at him, wide-eyed, her lips slightly parted, like she's totally shocked by his words.
Fuck it, he thinks, putting his hands on her face and pulling her lips to his.
She's completely still for a second, a sound of surprise in the back of her throat, but she recovers quickly. She presses herself against him, fingers curling into the side of his tee shirt as her lips open beneath his, her tongue slipping past his teeth to meet his as his fingers tangle in her hair.
Her eyes are wide again when he pulls back to look at her. "Shit," he mumbles, unable to form any sort of coherent sentence. He's been thinking about doing this with Rachel for...well, as long as they've been friends, really; she wasn't wrong. But when Finn put a ring on her finger, Puck pushed that all aside, determined to just be friends with his best friend's girl this time around, no matter what.
But Puck's bad with boundaries, okay?
"I think," Rachel says after a moment, "that you should buy me a drink."
Her voice is a little shaky, but she meets his eyes straight on, her fingers still caught up in the fabric of his shirt.
"Yeah." Puck nods, untangling his fingers from her hair. He'd like to pin her up against the wall and kiss her until she can't see straight, but instead he pushes her away gently. "Okay."
Puck buys her a drink, but she doesn't even drink half of it before she's kissing him again, letting him lead her to a dark corner at the back of the room so he can pin her against the wall the way he imagined. She giggles when her back hits the brick, pressing her hips forward and tipping her head up to meet his lips, and he's so fucking into her like this that he all but forgets where they are, caught up in the moment like he's in some cheesy fucking top 40 song.
This time around, Puck doesn't mind being a cliché.
*
When Quinn opens her eyes on the last morning of their trip - the morning that they're going back to Lima - Rachel is the first thing that she sees, still curled up in the bed next to Quinn's but with her eyes open.
"I don't want to go home," she says softly when she sees that Quinn is awake. "Is that bad?"
Quinn tugs the blanket up higher on her chest. "No. I don't want to go home either."
Going home means that they're all that much closer to moving away from home, moving on to what comes next. Moving away from each other. She's realized, over the course of this trip, that she's going to miss the three of them most of all, even Puck's lewd comments and Rachel being a pain in the ass.
And Mike... Well. Quinn is going to miss Mike.
Before this trip, she didn't think she was going to miss anyone.
*
Rachel sits in the middle of the back seat as Quinn drives across Indiana, pressed against Puck from shoulder to knee and singing along softly with the radio.
They've just crossed into Ohio when she asks, "Do you have anything planned for the rest of the week?"
Puck just tilts his head at her, telling her without words to get to the point without the little game. She looks at him impatiently, her lower lip coming out a little as she pouts.
"I was thinking that maybe you'd like to spend some time with me," she says, quietly enough that he knows Mike and Quinn can't hear her in the front seat. "If you aren't sick of me yet."
Puck still doesn't say anything, opting instead of kiss her gently, taking her hand and weaving their fingers together.
As long as Rachel will have him, Puck's going to be around.
*
Back in Lima, Quinn drops Rachel at home first, then Puck. In Mike's driveway, she cuts the engine and takes a deep breath.
"Have you noticed the smell in here?"
Mike looks up from the floorboard, where he's tucking a magazine into his backpack. "The smell?"
She only started noticing it in the last couple of hours, when the scenery alongside the highway started to become more familiar. "It's like..." She pauses to take another sniff. "Like Cheetos and boy sweat," she concludes. "Which is weird because I don't remember anyone eating Cheetos in here."
Mike chuckles, zipping his bag closed. "We can go to the car wash tomorrow and clean it out," he offers. "I'll spring for that air freshener stuff you spray under the seats."
Quinn smiles, her heart beating a little more quickly with the promise of spending another day with Mike. She hadn't let herself acknowledge it, not really, but a part of her had worried that this thing between them - whatever it is - was going to stop once they were back in Lima. "I'm going to hold you to that."
The corners of his mouth tick upward as he turns to face her, leaning across the console to kiss her gently. He rests his hand on her shoulder, brushing his thumb along the line of her collarbone as he sips at her lips. "I'm good for it," he promises.
She ignores the fluttering in her chest, leaning away from him. "You better be."
Chapter: 1/1
Pairings: Puck/Rachel, Mike/Quinn
Word Count: 7,300
Summary: "We should go on a road trip." Puck, Rachel, Mike, and Quinn go on a road trip, one last adventure before they have to move on and grow up.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Puck is sprawled out in an oversized armchair in Rachel Berry's basement when his summer takes a decidedly unexpected turn. Unexpected even if it is his idea. And yes, that totally makes sense.
"We should go on a road trip," he says, talking over the music that's playing.
Mike, lying flat on his back on the floor, lifts his head to look at Puck. Quinn does the same from her spot on the sofa. The four of them aren't doing anything, just soaking up the air conditioning and hanging out together because everyone else is gone or busy.
"I'm serious," he says. "In like, two months, you're all leaving, and we might not see each other ever again."
"Don't say that," Rachel interjects.
"We should go do something instead of just sitting around here until then," Puck goes on, ignoring her. And yeah, he thought of it thirty seconds ago, but he really does think it's a good idea.
"I'm not su--"
"I think it sounds like fun," Quinn interrupts Rachel. Mike looks just as surprised by her reaction as Puck feels. "I'm sick of Lima. I've been sick of Lima for three years," she adds under her breath.
Puck looks at Mike expectantly, watching him prop himself up on his elbows. "I'm in," Mike says. "It's not like I have anything else planned." Puck isn't really surprised. The guy hasn't done much of anything since he and Tina broke up.
Rachel's eyes widen slightly when she realizes that they're all looking at her, waiting for a response. It only takes a second for her expression to change, her eyes lighting up as she smiles brightly. "Where are we going?"
*
Quinn knows they're an odd foursome. At least, her presence in the group makes things a bit more awkward, given her history with both Rachel and Puck. If it wasn't for Mike, she's sure she would have backed out when Rachel laid out a map of the United States on the basement floor and started planning out a loose route for them to follow, drawing lines with colored pencils and adding tiny, star-shaped stickers to mark potential stops. Instead, she volunteered her new SUV for the trip.
Frankly, there's no way that this trip can be the worst thing she does this year, so why not?
"You're sure you want to do this?" her mom asks the morning that they're all leaving.
Quinn resists the urge to roll her eyes. "We've already had this conversation." She slips another paperback into her satchel just in case she finishes the two she's already packed, then turns to face her mother, hovering there in her bedroom doorway. "And if I was going to change my mind, I wouldn't do it an hour before we were supposed to leave."
A smile tugs at the corner of her mother's lips. "There's five hundred dollars in cash folded into a map of Connecticut in your glove box," she says. "Just in case."
"Mom--"
"Use the Visa for gas and hotels," Judy goes on, interrupting Quinn's protest before she can get it out. "That way I'll get points for it. And don't eat junk the entire time. Stop at a grocery store and get an apple once in a while."
"Mom--"
"I put a case of water and some snacks in the back of your car, but since you're going with those boys, all of that will be gone before you get to Kentucky. And make sure that you check the air press--"
"Mom." Quinn feels impossibly fond of her mother right now, watching her stand there with her lips pressed together and her eyes wide, like she's waiting for Quinn to say something nasty. And there was a time when that's exactly what would have happened. Instead, Quinn closes the space between them and pulls her mom into a hug. "I'll be safe and careful and nothing bad will happen. I promise. You don't have to worry."
"Of course I do," Judy says, holding Quinn at arm's length. "I'm your mom."
Standing in the driveway an hour later, Quinn watches similar conversations happening between Rachel and her dads and Mike and his mom. Puck comes to stand beside her, running a hand over his stupid hair. "My mom did that last night," he says quietly.
Quinn grins up at him. "This morning."
He considers the scene for a moment, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head. "Ten more minutes?"
"At least."
He lets out a long suffering sigh and shuffles around the back of the car to poke at the bags that have already been loaded.
*
"No," Puck says from the back seat when he hears the opening notes of "Tonight" ring through the speakers.
Rachel twists in her seat to face him. "It's West Side Story, Noah," she says.
"I know what it's from, Rachel. I'm sick of West Side Story."
"How can you be sick of West Side Story?" she asks, eyes wide, incredulous. "You were in West Side Story."
"We were all in West Side Story," Quinn interjects, not glancing up from the magazine she's been thumbing through since they stopped for gas at the Kentucky-Tennessee state line.
"That's why I'm sick of it," Puck tells Rachel, ignoring Quinn. "Pick something else. Please," he adds as an afterthought.
Rachel purses her lips and turns to fiddle with her iPod. When "Memory" starts playing, Puck rolls his eyes. Mike chuckles from the driver's seat when Rachel leans over to turn up the volume, and when Puck looks at Quinn, she just lifts an eyebrow as if to say, 'See what you did?'
Puck rescues himself with his iPod.
*
They stop at Waffle House for dinner the first day, despite Rachel's protests.
Quinn's stomach is growling when the waitress starts sitting plates in front of them, the aroma of waffles and bacon and melted cheese wafting up from the table nearly making her mouth water.
Across the table, Rachel pours her tiny box of Cheerios into a bowl and adds a bit of apple juice. "I'm going to starve on this trip," she says, resigned.
*
"Oh, my God," Quinn gasps, jerking Puck out of his doze.
It's bright when he opens his eyes. At least, it's brighter than it was when he closed them, which he assumes means that they're really in Atlanta now, the lights from the city itself illuminating the inside of the car. The clock on the dash tells him it's after midnight. Rachel is driving, and Quinn is glaring at her from the passenger seat.
"Pull over," Quinn orders, her voice flat.
"I can't pull over here." There's a hysterical edge to Rachel's voice. "It's not safe."
"Take the next exit and stop the car, Rachel."
Puck glances over at Mike, who looks as sleepy and clueless as he feels, and decides to say nothing. After a moment, Mike ventures a quiet, "What's going on?"
"Rachel is trying to get us killed," Quinn answers tersely.
"He was in my blind spot!"
"That's why you're supposed to look before you switch lanes, Rachel!"
When Rachel parks the car at the edge of a truck stop parking lot, they all four pile out. Quinn is mad, Rachel has tears in her eyes, and Puck doesn't know who's driving the rest of the way to the hotel, but he's ready to be there.
"I didn't mean to scare you," Rachel says, looking at Quinn across the hood of the car. "It's understandable that you have some trauma after your accident, but--"
"Shut up," Quinn snaps. "This is not post-accident trauma. This is you not being able to drive in traffic."
"I'll drive," Puck volunteers before anyone can say anything else. Quinn has that look on her face that she gets before she says something unnecessarily hurtful, and Rachel is about three seconds from crying. This is one of those situations that needs to be taken care of before it gets out of hand. He nudges Rachel toward the back door, sliding his hand across her back before climbing in front and adjusting the seat. He reaches across the console to squeeze Quinn's thigh - just a gentle, reassuring touch - before heading back out onto the freeway.
The car is silent save for Rachel's little sniffles coming from the backseat, muffled when Quinn turns up the radio so the Keri Hilson song playing becomes more than a murmur in the background. When he looks in the rearview mirror, Puck sees Mike rubbing a comforting hand over Rachel's shoulder, and he really hopes that this isn't the way this trip is going to go.
At breakfast the next morning, the girls act totally normal again - normal for Quinn and Rachel, at least. They've kissed and made up, allaying his fears and putting everything back onto an even keel.
Rachel doesn't drive into city traffic again for the rest of their trip.
*
Mike dances in the car.
Quinn really shouldn't be surprised, but it's impressive that he's still able to make moving around while wearing a seatbelt look like dancing. Even when it's done to country music, which Rachel and Puck insist on playing the entire way to Nashville after spending their two days in Atlanta listening to music by that city's natives.
Pop and locking to Johnny Cash has to qualify as a special skill.
"How do you even do that?" she demands, watching the way that he jolts his chest in time with the lyrics of 'Ring of Fire.'
He grins. "You want me to teach you how to isolate, Quinn?"
"Yes, I do."
It's the most ridiculous dance lesson she's ever had - and she was twelve years old in beginner's ballet classes full of four-year-olds and attempted to learn wheelchair choreography for glee club numbers just a few months ago - but Mike sincerely tries to teach her how to move her body like he moves his. His fingertips are warm when he taps them against her sternum, telling her to 'pull from here', his eyes bright when he watches her efforts
"You're better than you think," he insists when she gives up. She feels a little breathless, but she can't stop giggling, even when Puck mumbles something about listening to the same song over and over from the front seat. "I'm pretty sure you would actually be able to do it if you were standing."
She looks at him dubiously, shaking her head when he smiles brightly.
When they stop at the hotel that night, she proves him wrong.
Quinn can't remember the last time she had so much fun being bad at something.
*
Puck's pretty sure that he could live in Nashville.
There's like, a vibe that he can feel as soon as they drive into the city even though he sucks at trying to put it into words. It's relaxed, like no one's in a hurry to get anywhere, but there are still places to go. It's totally the city that country music built, down home and not at all pretentious, a little bit conservative but lacking the constant feeling of judgment that he's gotten used to in Lima.
He files all of that information away for later.
"Hey, I have something for you guys."
They spent the morning at the Grand Ol' Opry, and now they're at a restaurant that Quinn read about on some travel website that supposedly has the best cobbler in Nashville. The dessert is really good, and Rachel's and Quinn's mouths are so full that they aren't talking, so this seems like a good time to do this.
"What is it?" Rachel asks. Beside her, Quinn is watching him with a suspicious look that he ignores.
Puck digs the cards out of his wallet and sets them in front of each of them without a word.
"Is this," Rachel leans forward and drops her voice to a whisper, "a fake ID?" Puck smirks and takes another bite of blackberry cobbler.
Mike pulls his driver's license out of his wallet, holding the two cards side by side to compare. "It's actually pretty good," he says. "Hey, I'm twenty-one."
"Me too," Quinn says. "But you could've used a better picture."
"I've seen your driver's license, Q. I could've picked worse. Fuck," he bites out when she kicks him under the table, the hard edge of her sandal connecting with his shin.
"What if we get caught?" Rachel asks, still whispering.
Puck shrugs. "They take the ID and kick us out. Not much to lose. Look," he says when he sees her doubt, "we are going to New Orleans, and I'll be damned if I don't get to drink on Bourbon Street."
"You do know that Mardi Gras is in February, right?"
Puck glares at Quinn. "So not the point."
"I think it'll be cool," Mike says, obviously trying to defuse the situation. He's done that a lot on this trip.
Quinn slips her new ID into her wallet. "I want more cobbler," she says, looking around for the waitress, the conversation going on at the table forgotten.
"Fine," Rachel says. "But if I end up jail for this, I will never forgive you."
Puck reaches across the table to take her hand, looking her straight in the eye when he assures her, "I'll be there to bail you out."
*
They take a bit of a detour in Mississippi so they can spend a day on the beach. The humidity is oppressive this far south, and Quinn's hair is so limp that she gives up trying to do anything more than plait the strands away from her face. It's beautiful though, pale sand leading to blue water, the diamond-sharp sunlight reflecting so that she's forced to squint even behind her sunglasses.
A little way down the beach, Puck scoops Rachel up and carries her to the water, her squeals ringing out over the waves right up until he drops her into the surf. Quinn chuckles from her place on the beach, content to sit and watch until she's feeling more sure of herself. She hasn't ever really been comfortable in a bathing suit, and now there are scars from the accident to deal with. There's one on her upper thigh, where a piece of hard molded plastic from her car door tore through the side of her dress and left a curved cut a few inches long. Now, months later, there is a raised scar, the slightly puckered flesh shiny and discolored. No one has seen it yet, save for her mother and her doctors. She isn't hiding it exactly, but she isn't really letting anyone see it either.
Rachel is the one who notices it first, when she comes to sit on the towel next to Quinn's, her hair dripping cool water over the tops of Quinn's feet.
"Does it hurt?" she asks, gesturing to Quinn's hip. The scar looks darker now, a more angry red, reacting to being exposed to the sun even with the SPF 50 she applied.
"No," Quinn answers, brushing a self-conscious hand over her skin. "Those were just flesh wounds."
Rachel presses her lips together for a moment, looking out across the beach before bringing her gaze back to Quinn's face. "Quinn, I just want to tell you again--"
"I swear to god, if you apologize for the accident again, I won't talk to you until we get to Illinois." It's a significant threat; they're planning stops in three more states before then.
Rachel's eyebrows tick up. "I was going to say that I'm glad you agreed to come on this trip," she says, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, "because it's given us a chance to really become friends."
"Oh."
"I guess threats are just a part of friendship with Quinn Fabray I should get used to," she goes on, not even trying to hide her smile any longer.
"I'm going to swim." Quinn pushes to her feet, ignoring the almost smug expression on Rachel's face.
She and Mike jump the waves as they roll to the shore, hands grasped tight. She forgets to be self-conscious, and at the end of the day her nose and the tops of her shoulders are pink despite her best efforts with the sunblock. She decides, when she's smoothing aloe vera lotion on her shoulders in the backseat of her car, that the handful of freckles she might get will be worth it.
*
"Dance with me, Noah."
Rachel slips her arms around his neck from behind, her lips next to his ear, the stack of bracelets on her wrist making musical little noises. Puck wonders just how many drinks she's had while he wasn't paying attention.
"I don't dance."
She drops into the chair beside him, pouting. One of her hands is still resting on his bicep, her fingers warm through the sleeve of his tee shirt. "You're a member of a national champion show choir. You dance."
"Not like this." Not in a New Orleans jazz club where they're underage. "Dance with Mike."
"I already danced with Mike," she answers. "Mike wants to dance with Quinn. And I want to dance with you."
Puck takes a second to just look at her. She's obviously drunk, her hair a wavy mess and her lip gloss long since smudged away. She's also stupidly hot in a flippy little skirt and a low-cut halter top, sweat glistening on her skin.
"What are the chances of me getting out of this?"
She smiles brilliantly, knowing that she's already won. "Zero. You have zero chance of getting out of it," she answers, already tugging him up out of his seat and toward the dance floor.
It's fun, which isn't really a surprise. Rachel's a pain in the ass sometimes, but she does know how to let loose and have fun, especially after a drink or six. He's thought about how fun she is a lot on this trip, even with the excessive showtunes and the way she makes them stop at roadside produce stands and farmers' markets so she can exclaim over tomatoes and cucumbers and strawberries.
She slides her little hands up his arms and over his neck, sways her hips and presses her body to his. His hand slips beneath the hem of her shirt, the skin at the small of her back smooth and hot under his fingers. Her head tips back when she laughs, and he realizes, all at once but certainly not for the first time, that Rachel Berry is sexy as fuck.
He's thought a lot about how she's sexy on this trip too.
Puck lets her hold his hand when they're walking back to their hotel after last call. Mike and Quinn are walking ahead of them with their arms linked together; he hears Quinn's laugh ring out over the sounds of the street more than once.
"You were right," Rachel says out of nowhere. She bumps her hip into his when he raises a questioning eyebrow. "About the IDs," she stage whispers. "Tonight was a lot of fun."
He smirks. "I'm always right when it comes to doing things you think you shouldn't."
"Yes, you are," she murmurs, looking up at him from beneath her eyelashes. It makes him want to kiss her, which is about seven different kinds of wrong. Sure, she and Finn aren't together any more, but it isn't as simple as that. Puck isn't sure if he and Rachel will still be friends once she gets to New York and he does whatever, but he doesn't want to fuck things up before she even goes. He's pretty sure that's what'll happen if he goes there with her. It might not be worth it.
However much he wants to go there.
They get to the hotel before he can even begin to decipher the shit in his head. Rachel kisses his cheek, lingering there while she says a quiet goodnight, then disappears into the room she's sharing with Quinn.
*
Quinn hates bell peppers and she isn't a huge fan of seafood, so the food in New Orleans doesn't do much for her. Memphis barbecue is another story.
She expects Rachel to say something about the poor animals that died to make their meal, but she keeps her mouth shut, working her way through a plate of side dishes, at least a couple of which Quinn is pretty sure aren't vegan. Save for bitching about stops at Waffle House, Rachel hasn't said much about her diet, and has even tried a few things that definitely aren't vegan. Quinn's impressed, but she hasn't said anything just in case pointing it out turns it into a topic of conversation.
"Elvis was an icon," Rachel says, brandishing her fork, a piece of fried okra hanging precariously from the tines.
"Well, yeah," Mike agrees, "but he was also cool as hell."
Quinn can't help smiling as she glances over at him. It came as a surprise, learning that Mike is an Elvis fan, but he sang along with every song on Puck's Elvis playlist on the drive here, and he's the one who mentioned Graceland back when they were first planning the trip in Rachel's basement.
Graceland is simultaneously the tackiest and most fascinating place Quinn has ever seen.
And she's really happy that she gets to watch Mike enjoy it.
"Elvis was one crazy dude," Mike comments when they're walking through the jungle room. Quinn ignores the glare that one of the women walking past them shoots in their direction. (She's wearing a fanny pack. Really.) "But like, crazy talented."
Quinn glances over her shoulder, making sure that Rachel isn't within earshot. "You know, people are going to be saying that about Rachel Berry in fifty years, and we're going to be able to say we knew her back when she was wearing animal sweaters and forcing people to be in horrible music videos with her."
Mike snorts out a laugh. "Do you think there'll be mannequins?"
Quinn nods seriously. "Oh, for sure. And photos. We'll be in them. Maybe they'll interview us for the glee club exhibit."
"You know she'd love this idea, right?"
That's exactly why it's so much fun.
*
Puck is still sleeping when someone comes knocking on the door of the hotel room he's sharing with Mike on their last morning in Memphis. Mike is in the shower, forcing Puck to roll out of bed and answer the door.
Rachel blinks at the sight of him, bleary-eyed and in boxers, but gathers herself quickly. "I think we should go to Branson."
"Branson," he repeats, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Why?"
"Why not?"
Puck scoffs, moving back into the room and flopping down on the bed. He's not surprised when Rachel follows, sitting close enough that her thigh is pressed against his. Her skin is bare thanks to her little shorts, smooth and distractingly warm. "It'll add a day to the trip, but it really isn't that far out of the way, and then we can say that we've been."
"The fuck is in Branson?" he asks, voice muffled by the pillow. In the bathroom, the water stops running, and he hopes that Mike comes out sooner rather than later so he can entertain Rachel and give Puck a chance to escape before he reacts to her closeness any more than he already is.
It's not like anyone could blame him. It's morning and there's a girl in his bed.
"There are shows and a theme park, and there's a Titanic museum." He makes an impatient noise. A fucking Titanic museum? Really? "It's iconic, Noah."
"What's iconic?" Mike asks, finally emerging from the bathroom. Puck rolls off the bed, pushing his way into the bathroom to avoid taking part in the conversation. And to debate between taking a cold shower or just giving in and jerking off.
*
Branson is underwhelming. The area is pretty, yes, and interesting in a Midwestern kitsch sort of way, but the traffic is hideous and the wonderful silliness of the Dixie Stampede barely makes up for it.
Quinn doesn't mind that they went out of their way. She has three drinks with dinner, then calls shotgun when Mike volunteers to drive the leg to St. Louis. Puck and Rachel are asleep in the back before they even make it to the interstate, Puck's head lolling back and Rachel curled up in a little ball despite her seatbelt.
"He's going to bitch about his neck all day tomorrow," Quinn says, pulling her leg up into the seat so she can turn to face Mike. She should be tired, but she's the sort of wide awake that only happens when she's been drinking.
"He snores," is Mike's response.
"I know."
It's too dark for Quinn to read his expression when he looks over at her. "Right. I forget that you lived wi...together," he says, making it sound better than it was. Usually that would make her impatient, but it doesn't tonight. Possibly that's the rum. "You're actually friends now though, right?"
"We are. What we did was a thousand different kinds of stupid," she says, pushing her hair behind her ear, "but he really isn't a bad guy."
He's quiet for a while, signalling his way into the left lane to pass a tractor trailer before saying, "Do you think..." and then trailing off.
"What?" Quinn prompts.
He glances at her. "Would you take it back if you could? The whole pregnancy thing?"
"I'm supposed to say no," she answers after a moment. She toys with her necklace, twisting the chain around her neck until the clasp hits the pendant, then back again. "I love Beth. But honestly? If I could go back and not get pregnant with my boyfriend's best friend when I was sixteen?" She smiles wryly to herself. "Yes, I'd take it back."
"Do you ever wish you would have kept her?" He practically whispers the question, like he isn't sure he should be asking it at all.
"Yes. But that's even more selfish than wishing that I could take it all back," she tells him. It's the most truthful she's ever been when someone has asked her questions like these, but it feels...right.
Again, possibly the rum.
Except she thinks that more than the alcohol, it's because she's talking to Mike.
"I think that's okay." Quinn strains to see his face in the light coming from the dashboard. "Everybody has things they would change, right? And sometimes it's okay to be selfish."
"You aren't."
"Quinn, I declined admission to Harvard to be a dancer."
"That's not the same."
He shifts his hands on the steering wheel. "Maybe not," he concedes. "But that doesn't mean that I'm never selfish."
Quinn leans her head back against the seat, trying to think of the last time that she saw Mike Chang do something selfish. She falls asleep before she can come up with anything.
*
"Reptile house," Mike states seriously.
Rachel wrinkles her nose. "Wouldn't you rather see the polar bears?"
"Are there polar bears in the reptile house?" Quinn asks meanly.
"Don't be a bitch, Q."
Puck thinks he's too old to be at a zoo without his sister or Beth or some other little ankle biter, but he got ignored when he suggested the tour of the Budweiser brewery. Whatever.
He moves to stand beside Rachel. "You guys go to the reptile house," he says, looking at Mike. "We'll go see the polar bears."
Quinn rolls her eyes, but says nothing as Rachel starts rattling off facts about polar bears, letting Mike lead her away with his hand on the small of her back.
"Let's go, Rach," Puck says, interrupting her spiel about ice floes or something. "The polar bears are waiting."
They walk in silence for a couple hundred yards, following the signs that point to the polar bear habitat while dodging two different families with a total of three strollers. Puck shoves his wistful thoughts to the back of his mind, deliberately checking out the ass of a mom carrying a toddler instead of looking at the little girl's blonde curls.
"You don't care about the polar bears at all, do you?" Rachel asks, breaking Puck's line of thought along with the silence. He smirks down at her.
"Nope."
She smiles. "You know, I don't take Quinn's comments personally any more," she says. "I don't think she means them that way any more, actually."
"She doesn't," he confirms. If Quinn still hated Rachel, she never would have agreed to come on this trip, but besides that, Puck can tell when Quinn's being a bitch and when she's just being Quinn.
Rachel grabs his hand when they near the tunnel at the polar bear habitat. "I want to see them swim," she insists, tugging him with her down the little hill. He goes along without protest; he really doesn't mind following Rachel's lead.
*
It would be like crawling into a washing machine, Quinn thinks when she sees the little capsule she's supposed to ride to get to the top of the Gateway Arch. Her throat constricts, and even though it's cool down here, she can feel the sweat start to prickle at the back of her neck.
"I can't do this," she says simply, meeting Puck's eyes briefly before turning heel, gathering her hair in one hand to get it off her neck as she heads back up the steps into the museum space.
"Wait, Quinn!"
Mike is jogging toward her when she turns. She drops her hair with a little sigh. "You don't have to stay with me."
He shrugs lazily. "I've been up before." He watches her for a second, then grins. "You wanna get McFlurries at the floating McDonald's?"
While Puck and Rachel enjoy the view from the Arch, Mike and Quinn sit on the steps that lead down to the Mississippi River, trading bites of ice cream and making up stories about the people around them.
*
"What's up with you and Quinn?"
Puck just asks. He doesn't know how to do it without sounding like a nosy asshole or a girl, so he just goes for it. Quinn and Rachel are in the bathroom - together, because they are girls - and he and Mike are waiting for them to get back so they can decide exactly how they want to spend the rest of the night.
Mike lifts an eyebrow, sitting back in his seat. "What's up with you and Rachel?" he shoots back.
"We're friends," Puck answers, even as he blinks stupidly. The question catches him off guard. "We're all friends. And besides, Finn--"
"Enlisted," Mike interrupts, "and broke up with Rachel and told her to go to New York alone." He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. "And friends don't look at friends the way you look at Rachel."
Puck only needs a second to say, "Like how you look at Quinn?"
"Okay, yeah," Mike says after a minute. "I like her. But we're going to be home in like, three days, and then we're going to be in totally different places."
Puck shoots him a pointed look, but says nothing else as they're rejoined by the girls.
*
"I love Chicago," Quinn announces, dropping into the chair beside Mike.
"Yeah?" he chuckles.
"Yes. I also love gin." She takes a sip of her drink to drive the point home, grinning around her straw when Mike laughs.
"Chicago looks good on you, I think."
"I agree."
So Quinn's a little drunk. They're all a little drunk. (Actually, if the way that she can't stop giggling as Puck moves her around the dance floor is any indication, Rachel is very drunk, not that it matters.) She's on vacation with people who she likes and trusts, so why shouldn't she be a little drunk? They're young; now is the time when she's supposed to be doing things like this.
There are lots of things 'like this,' she thinks, putting her hand on Mike's leg under the table. "Hey," he says quietly, meeting her eyes.
"I don't love you," she says, and Mike's eyebrows come together just a tiny bit, "but I like you a lot."
"You're drunk," he says quietly, but he doesn't make any effort to move away from her when she nods. "You're cute though."
She leans into him. "Is it because I'm drunk?" she asks. He shakes his head, his eyes dropping to her lips. She tilts her head a little. "Is it because you're drunk?"
"Quinn--"
She cuts him off with a kiss. It's just a gentle brush of her lips against his, just enough to make him stop talking - stop thinking - and take a breath.
Then he's kissing her in earnest, one hand cupping the side of her neck while the other curves around her waist, pulling her closer to him. It's the kiss she didn't know she wanted, with his chest warm under her palm and the taste of beer on his lips. She sinks into it, the sounds of the bar around them fading to a dull hum.
"About fucking time," Puck declares, bringing Quinn back into the present when Mike pulls away.
She glares at him, sliding her hand up to rest on Mike's shoulder. "Don't you have something better to do?"
He holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I just came to see if you needed more drinks. If you want me to go, I'll go."
Quinn widens her eyes. "Go."
Puck grins wolfishly as he rises from the table, slapping Mike hard on the back when he walks away.
"I'm glad you're not that mean to me," Mike says when she looks up at him, his fingers moving distractingly against her skin at her hairline.
"You don't deserve it. He does."
Mike just lets out a hum before kissing her again.
*
"I think you two are cute," Rachel says at breakfast the next morning. Mike turns red, Quinn glares, and Puck smothers the laugh that threatens to bubble up out of his chest, shoving a huge bite of pancake into his mouth.
*
"You're going to be back here in just a few weeks," Rachel says to Mike when they're waiting for their lunch at one of the dozens of restaurants that claims to have the best deep dish pizza in Chicago. "For good."
Mike nods. "My apartment is like a dozen blocks from here."
Quinn takes a sip of her Diet Coke to give her hands something to do. Across the table, Puck fiddles with his fork. Mike's fingers brush the side of Quinn's thigh, just below the hem of her skirt, under the table where no one else can see. She moves into his touch a little, an acknowledgment. Talking about the end of the summer and what comes after has been taboo during this trip, and Rachel just broke it. It's...uncomfortable.
The waiter delivers their pizza (and Rachel's salad), effectively ending the conversation before it really gets started.
*
On their last night in Chicago - the last night of their trip - they go out to another bar, this one suggested by a group of girls Quinn and Rachel apparently befriended in a bathroom somewhere during the day. It has that relaxed dive bar feeling without being grimy, and it looks to Puck like the clientele is mostly made up of college-aged kids. Rachel spends nearly half an hour choosing songs at the jukebox ("Trust me, Noah, these people will appreciate a well-chosen soundtrack to their evening just as much as we will," Rachel insists - and that's before her third tequila sunrise.), and Quinn teaches the three of them how to play darts properly.
It's a totally unremarkable night, right up until Rachel corners him in the hallway outside of the bathroom.
"Why haven't you kissed me?" she asks without preamble. Puck feels his mouth open and close, like an ugly fish out of water, but no sound comes out. "You haven't even tried."
"What are you talking about?"
She huffs out an exasperated breath. "The entire time we've been friends, you've always taken every opportunity to try to kiss me. Every time I've been single. Even when I wasn't single," she adds, her voice a little shrill.
"Are you drunk?" he asks, unsure of where this is coming from. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he knows it was the wrong thing to say.
"I am not drunk," she snaps indignantly. "I want to know why you don't want me."
He continues to gape at her, but for a totally different reason. "Who said I didn't want you?"
She blinks at him, wide-eyed, her lips slightly parted, like she's totally shocked by his words.
Fuck it, he thinks, putting his hands on her face and pulling her lips to his.
She's completely still for a second, a sound of surprise in the back of her throat, but she recovers quickly. She presses herself against him, fingers curling into the side of his tee shirt as her lips open beneath his, her tongue slipping past his teeth to meet his as his fingers tangle in her hair.
Her eyes are wide again when he pulls back to look at her. "Shit," he mumbles, unable to form any sort of coherent sentence. He's been thinking about doing this with Rachel for...well, as long as they've been friends, really; she wasn't wrong. But when Finn put a ring on her finger, Puck pushed that all aside, determined to just be friends with his best friend's girl this time around, no matter what.
But Puck's bad with boundaries, okay?
"I think," Rachel says after a moment, "that you should buy me a drink."
Her voice is a little shaky, but she meets his eyes straight on, her fingers still caught up in the fabric of his shirt.
"Yeah." Puck nods, untangling his fingers from her hair. He'd like to pin her up against the wall and kiss her until she can't see straight, but instead he pushes her away gently. "Okay."
Puck buys her a drink, but she doesn't even drink half of it before she's kissing him again, letting him lead her to a dark corner at the back of the room so he can pin her against the wall the way he imagined. She giggles when her back hits the brick, pressing her hips forward and tipping her head up to meet his lips, and he's so fucking into her like this that he all but forgets where they are, caught up in the moment like he's in some cheesy fucking top 40 song.
This time around, Puck doesn't mind being a cliché.
*
When Quinn opens her eyes on the last morning of their trip - the morning that they're going back to Lima - Rachel is the first thing that she sees, still curled up in the bed next to Quinn's but with her eyes open.
"I don't want to go home," she says softly when she sees that Quinn is awake. "Is that bad?"
Quinn tugs the blanket up higher on her chest. "No. I don't want to go home either."
Going home means that they're all that much closer to moving away from home, moving on to what comes next. Moving away from each other. She's realized, over the course of this trip, that she's going to miss the three of them most of all, even Puck's lewd comments and Rachel being a pain in the ass.
And Mike... Well. Quinn is going to miss Mike.
Before this trip, she didn't think she was going to miss anyone.
*
Rachel sits in the middle of the back seat as Quinn drives across Indiana, pressed against Puck from shoulder to knee and singing along softly with the radio.
They've just crossed into Ohio when she asks, "Do you have anything planned for the rest of the week?"
Puck just tilts his head at her, telling her without words to get to the point without the little game. She looks at him impatiently, her lower lip coming out a little as she pouts.
"I was thinking that maybe you'd like to spend some time with me," she says, quietly enough that he knows Mike and Quinn can't hear her in the front seat. "If you aren't sick of me yet."
Puck still doesn't say anything, opting instead of kiss her gently, taking her hand and weaving their fingers together.
As long as Rachel will have him, Puck's going to be around.
*
Back in Lima, Quinn drops Rachel at home first, then Puck. In Mike's driveway, she cuts the engine and takes a deep breath.
"Have you noticed the smell in here?"
Mike looks up from the floorboard, where he's tucking a magazine into his backpack. "The smell?"
She only started noticing it in the last couple of hours, when the scenery alongside the highway started to become more familiar. "It's like..." She pauses to take another sniff. "Like Cheetos and boy sweat," she concludes. "Which is weird because I don't remember anyone eating Cheetos in here."
Mike chuckles, zipping his bag closed. "We can go to the car wash tomorrow and clean it out," he offers. "I'll spring for that air freshener stuff you spray under the seats."
Quinn smiles, her heart beating a little more quickly with the promise of spending another day with Mike. She hadn't let herself acknowledge it, not really, but a part of her had worried that this thing between them - whatever it is - was going to stop once they were back in Lima. "I'm going to hold you to that."
The corners of his mouth tick upward as he turns to face her, leaning across the console to kiss her gently. He rests his hand on her shoulder, brushing his thumb along the line of her collarbone as he sips at her lips. "I'm good for it," he promises.
She ignores the fluttering in her chest, leaning away from him. "You better be."