Once, the only colour I knew was grey
Title: Once, the only colour I knew was grey
Author: Phelipa
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Quinn/Puck
Summary: A collection of moments throughout Quinn's pregnancy.
Spoilers: Up to "Hell-O" and mild speculation for the upcoming episode
Just because there’s a kid in her uterus, sucking the life out of her, that’s likely to come out waving pom poms or sporting a telling Mohawk, doesn’t mean she’s about to turn into a pile of mush.
(Sure, Puck found her sobbing over that commercial for A Baby Story the other day and when she sees onesies in the store she can’t help but stop and swoon for a moment, but dammit, she is not that person.)
She keeps right on drawing pornographic pictures on the bathroom walls (although it makes her belly ache and stretch when she squats down to get the right angle to add a moustache) and terrorizing Rachel because that’s what she does.
Santana’s torn between despising Rachel and despising Quinn so she joins in on the porno-potty drawings (adding the moustache when Quinn can’t reach anymore) but decides not to speak to her outside of those instances. Brittany, for whatever reason, refuses to participate and gives Quinn an appraising look one afternoon, shaking her head,
“It used to be funny, when you were popular and bitchy. Now it’s just kind of sad.”
Santana stops helping her with the drawings, shrugging noncommittally as Brittany twists her fingers through Santana’s and guides her down the hall. To add injury to insult, the baby gives her a swift kick in the ribs and she lets out a whoosh of air, pressing a hand to the top of her belly and gasping out an irritated sigh,
“Alright, I get it!”
*
She stops the drawings, stops calling her manhands and treasure trail and Ru-Paul. Rachel looks at her weird now, a suspicious kind of glare in her eyes but Quinn just shrugs and says,
“Even I can’t do much in the way of improving your look. Besides, I’m spending the majority of my day in there and I’m tired of looking at your face while I’m peeing.”
“Yeah, whatever Quinn.” She just says, looping her arm through Finn’s as they leave.
“Yo, mamacita - you ready to go? I’ve gotta pick up dip and rubbers on the way home.”
Her nose crinkles in disgust and she stalks out after him, swinging her backpack over her shoulders and grumbling scathingly,
“You are disgusting. Do you tell every girl you sleep with that you’ve got another pregnant one living in your room?”
“Learning experience, babe. Learning experience - why do you think I’m getting jimmies in the first place?”
“Ugh.” She just moans, pulling herself up into the passenger seat of his truck, “You just bring one home and I’ll show her how joyful it is to be pregnant with your kid.”
He turns on the radio, cranking it up before grinning and yelling,
“What’s that? Can’t hear you!”
She just rolls her eyes and glances out the window as he pulls out of the parking lot.
*
She’s getting damn good at Call of Duty.
He’s getting pissed that she’s robbing him of quality gaming time.
She doesn’t look away from the screen as she grins and says,
“Hey Puckerone, while you were out scoring I took the liberty to blow your head off and have thus awarded myself extra playing time.”
Laura giggles from her spot next to Quinn on the floor and crows teasingly,
“Yeeeaaah, Quinn is doing awesome!”
He tosses his hands up in the air and backs out of the door in defeat, “Whatever, you chicks have fun - I’m going out in the real world.”
“Mom’s going to be pissed if you’re not home for dinner.” Laura yells.
“Watch your mouth, midget!” He shouts back, grabbing a bag of chips from the cupboard and settling himself down on the upstairs couch while they continue to play downstairs.
He can hear Laura gloating all the way downstairs; I knew he wouldn’t go out.
*
Puck frowns, tilting his head as he studies the screen,
“I see nothing.”
The technician points out the baby’s spine and little legs, the arms as they move about within her. He shrugs, still looking at the screen; he couldn’t tell this shit from an overgrown sea monkey. When he tells Quinn, she just laughs, but the technician scowls like he’s just run over her puppy.
He watches, bored, as the technician takes measurements and assures Quinn that the baby is developing normally. She takes one more, quick scan of her belly and Puck perks up, pointing at the screen,
“Hey - you all made a big mistake, that kid’s got a dick.”
Quinn nearly dies laughing as the technician frowns, shaking her head as she snottily replies,
“That’s the baby’s nose.”
He grimaces, studying the picture again as he remarks, “That’s one hell of a nose.”
*
She’s stretched out in his bed, flicking through some parenting magazine she found stashed in Mrs. Puckerman’s mountain downstairs, when he flops down next to her and kicks off his shoes. She glares at him for making the bed bounce, taking a moment to right herself on the sheets before turning back to the article entitled Terrible Training, Terrible Toddlers.
She ignores him steadfastly as he rolls on his side, gently reaching across to rub the bottom of her belly. It’s an excuse to get his fingers down the front of her stretched out leggings, she’s fully aware, but she waits until he’s toying with the bow on her panties to swat his hand away irritably,
“Stop it.”
He positively whines her name and she rolls her eyes, “You’re pathetic, go do it yourself.”
He resorts to bartering, “I’ll get you off twice.”
She contemplates, lets him sweat for a moment, before shaking her head,
“You think I’m going to have sex with you after your complete mental breakdown where you proceeded to screw half the girls in Lima? Who knows what you picked up? Seriously Puck, not interested until you’ve got the paperwork to prove you won’t be putting anything else unwanted down there.”
Three days later he hands her a sheet of paper with a list of negatives down the right side and she grins.
After all, she’s an incredibly hormonal, pregnant teen and she’s got needs too.
*
“Have you been taking your prenatal vitamins?”
Quinn nods, swallowing the mouthful of spaghetti before she says, “Religiously.”
Mrs. Puckerman smiles weakly, “Good, that’s good.”
Dinner is always a little tense, his mother trying to play nice around the two of them, Quinn desperately struggling to keep up a ‘good little girl’ front, him watching the two of them chat back and forth while Laura sculpts horse jumps out of her garlic bread.
His mother frowns when she catches her trying to tie individual strands of spaghetti together to make a pony and snaps,
“Laura, eat your dinner. You’re nine, not two.”
“Ma, I’ve got a history thing tomorrow morning and Quinn’s got her baby video thing - can you take her?”
The entire room goes dead silent and Quinn is tuning her head slowly, wearing what is sure to be the most epic death stare he’s ever seen in his entire life. His mother just looks really, really tired all of a sudden and lets out a weak little sigh,
“You don’t have a history thing tomorrow, Quinn?”
Sweet, non-death stare Quinn returns and she shakes her head, not about to tell Mrs. Puckerman that this make up test is a last ditch effort to boost Puck’s grades and get him to graduate at the end of the year,
“No, they give me a pass for sonograms.”
She says the last word pointedly, looking back at Puck (baby video thing, for goodness sakes).
Puck’s mom is nodding, standing and starting to clear the table,
“If you can be ready for 8:45 I’ll drop Laura off at school on the way and bring you to McKinley when you’re finished.”
“Great, thanks Mrs. Puckerman.”
She leaves and Quinn whips her head back in his direction, fixing him with a look that would strip him down and quarter him, could looks kill. He just shrugs,
“Sorry Q.”
*
She has better things to worry about other than the fact that Mrs. Puckerman is crying next to her as she watches the sonogram.
Like the fact that the six glasses of water she was instructed to drink this morning are protesting violently to being pummelled by the ultrasound transducer, or that her daughter has chosen this precise moment to alternate between kicking her in the diaphragm and the stomach.
Still, it’s Puck’s mom, the one who took her in after her own parents kicked her unceremoniously to the curb, and she has a pretty good guess as to why she’s sobbing.
Shit.
She waits until she’s able to shift her attention off of keeping her pee in her bladder to glance up in her direction and mutter a guilty, half hearted,
“Sorry.”
To her complete and utter disbelief, Mrs. Puckerman just shakes her head, “It’s not that. She’s beautiful, Quinn.”
Quinn glances at the screen dubiously, “I don’t know about that yet, but one can only hope.”
Mrs. Puckerman brushes away her tears and smiles ruefully, “You’re doing a good thing Quinn.”
Huh, she’d never really thought about it like that.
*
Her ass is three times its normal size.
She no longer fits in her roomiest pyjamas, and the whole situation is entirely depressing. Snarling a little, she yanks out a pair of Puck’s pyjama bottoms and struggles into them, tying the waistband just below her enormous belly. The hard, rounded flesh peeks out from beneath her maternity t-shirt and she frowns, her body is an absolute disgrace.
Puck pushes the door open and immediately frowns, confused,
“Those mine?”
She nods and points at her belly, “This is yours too; it grants me access to all of your clothes when I can no longer fit into my own.”
He rolls his eyes and reaches for another pair of pyjama bottoms and a grey t-shirt. She studies him for a moment before asking,
“Not going out?”
He gives her a wry little grin, “Not tonight, figured I’d spend some time with my baby mama.”
“If you’re thinking sex, think again.” She says immediately, “If I can’t see what you’re doing down there - which I haven’t been able to for about three weeks now - sex is off the table.”
He waves her off, “Yeah, yeah. I picked up that stupid ass chick flick you wanted to see. It’s on the living room table.”
Not only is the movie she wanted to see on the table, but there’s a couple bags of peanut M & M’s and cool ranch Doritos sitting beside it. When he calls from the kitchen that he’s making her pizza and what does she want on it, she nearly drops in a dead faint.
She’s seriously rethinking the sex prohibition right about now.
*
Rachel comes to Glee on Monday and her hair is dripping little icy blue particles.
Call it maternal instinct, hormones, or absolute bat shit craziness, but something snaps within her and Puck is holding her down as she fumes. That is her crazy person and when she says cut the shit; she means cut the shit. If she’s not allowed to draw Rachel-porn in the stalls, there will be no slushie facials.
When she corners Karofsky that afternoon and rips into him, she doesn’t even notice Puck in the background, shaking his head and frantically waving his hands to keep him from doing something that’s going to send Quinn off on a killing spree. Karofsky just shrugs, makes some dumbass comment about Quinn being a lesbian that makes her puff up and quiver angrily, before leaving Puck to deal with the raging, hormonal mess.
He spends the night listening to Quinn rant and rave until she’s blue in the face, but Rachel never stares down the barrel of an empty slushie cup again.
*
He finds her stretched out on the couch, rolled onto her side so that the weight of the baby won’t suffocate her, and watching the TV with a stricken look on her face. He glances at the screen, catches an eyeful of some sorry ass person popping their kid out, and asks,
“Why do you watch this shit? You know it scares you.”
“You think it’s scary now?” She gasps, “Look at that - I am not doing that.”
He laughs, “Sorry, Q - but I’m pretty sure you are.”
She shakes her head, “Nope, I’ve decided that I’m going to stay pregnant for the rest of my life. We discussed it, me and the baby, while you were at school.”
“That right?” He muses, walking to the kitchen.
“We made a deal.” She yells.
“Yeah, good luck with that, woman.” He calls back, rustling through the cupboards.
He hears the woman on screen give a terrifying wail and yells, “Dammit, Quinn - turn it off before you give yourself an aneurysm.
*
“Puck.” She moans, kicking him under the covers.
He flies out of bed like she’s set off a bomb under his ass and runs to the door, grabbing her bag and hauling it off the floor while simultaneously trying to kick off his pyjama bottoms and reach for a pair of jeans,
“I’ll get my mom, you get whatever clothes you want and I’ll call the hospital.”
“Puck!” She calls out after him as he runs out the door, propping herself up on her elbow only to be stopped by the awkward weight of her belly as she tries to follow him.
He returns a moment later with his dishevelled looking mother and Laura trails in a moment later, rubbing at her eyes and yawning widely. His mother settles on the bed next to her, asking calmly,
“How far apart are the contractions? Did your water break yet?”
Quinn’s cheeks flush bright red as she looks up at Puck accusingly and murmurs,
“I just wanted a bowl of ice cream.”
*
When her water breaks all over the tiled cafeteria floor, she just goes with it.
She’s already got the whole teen pregnancy cliché thing going on, why not embrace the situation and have the entire school watch her waddle out of the dining area as a dark spot spreads between her legs. The glee kids follow, nearly tripping over themselves in excitement as she struggles into Puck’s truck and urges him to hurry the hell up.
The others follow behind them and while she signs in at the front desk they settle themselves in the waiting room for a long night. She pushes Puck away, telling him to call his mother and send her in when she gets there, before the nurse helps her into a wheelchair.
“Hey!” He calls as they wheel her down the hall, “Good luck squishin’ the kid out - hopefully her head isn’t as big as yours!”
She stares straight ahead as she lifts her hand to flip him the bird and swears she hears her nurse chuckle.
*
She cries a lot more than she would have liked (and screams. and sweats.).
As it turns out, birth is not like those movies that people cringe at, it’s a million times worse. It’s messy and awkward and so incredibly painful (she’s thankful when she finally hits four centimetres with regular contractions and they agree to give her an epidural).
Rachel pops in at one point, just as Quinn’s getting ready to push, to tell her that Puck is losing his shit out in the waiting room, listening to her scream.
She pokes her head in the door again, ten minutes later, when Quinn’s legs are shoved up past her ears and she’s pushing a damn bowling ball out, to inform her that they had to call a stretcher code because he got so worked up that he fainted. Quinn would scream at her to get out, but she nearly collapses in a fit of giggles before she can muster up enough breath to push again.
Half an hour later, she’s holding a tiny pink bundle (with a normal sized nose, she might add) in her arms when he’s ushered in, a nurse holding onto his elbow and directing him to the nearest chair. He takes the offered orange juice and downs it in a single swallow, glaring up at her as he says,
“Not a word, Fabray. Not a single word.”
*
“Here,” She says, thrusting the baby into his arms, “Burp her, if I don’t eat something I’m going to keel over and die.”
He holds the baby at arms length, eyeing her suspiciously, “How do I...?”
“Prop her up on your knee, hold her chin in your palm so that she’s leaning against your arm and pat her back.”
He collapses on the couch, struggling to get the baby sitting up and cradled against his arm. She squawks noisily, squirming on his knee, until he starts patting her back and she seems to relax against his arm. He grins too himself, this shit isn’t so hard.
The baby chooses that moment to barf all over his jeans. He lets out a shout, lifting the baby up as she cries noisily, and yells,
“Quinn! Dammit Quinn, get in here!”
She runs back into the room and doubles over laughing when she catches him with the baby held over his lap, dripping baby puke onto his favourite jeans. She can barely catch her breath as she takes the baby, stripping her out of her soiled pyjamas, and tosses him a burping cloth to wipe off his pants.
“Always use a blanket.” She says, still giggling as she wipes the baby’s face with a warm cloth, “She’s a puker.”
He stares down at his pants in dismay and frowns,
“Now you tell me.”
*
He holds the bottle up to the light, squinting at the little markings on the side of the plastic.
“Yeah, baby,” He says proudly, “6 ounces, you’ll sleep for a solid three hours, packing away this shit!”
“Language.” Quinn moans sleepily from beside him, giving him a nudge under the covers.
“Fist bump.” Puck mock whispers, holding his fist up in front of the dozing baby’s eyes.
Her fingers close into a tiny fist and his eyes widen, brows drawing up into a stunned expression as he kicks Quinn back under the sheets, eliciting an annoyed groan.
“Dude, did you see that!? This kid is cool!”
If he didn’t know any better, he’d say the kid smiled.
*