one more to see just what you're made of [1/2]
Title: one more to see just what you're made of
Chapter: 1/2
Rating: R
Character: Puck/Rachel
Summary: Rachel fails gym, and Puck takes it upon himself to make sure she doesn't flunk out of summer school, too. That's how he finds himself teaching her how to play baseball. Fictable Prompt #16 - Weakness.
Word Count: 19,000 (total)
Disclaimer: Don't own.
To be honest, he doesn't even hate summer school all that much. Sure, he, you know, has to go to school in the summer, but he's been doing it so long that it's kind of a tradition now. It's like the teachers expect him, and he wouldn't want to let them down or anything. They're way more awesome than everyday teachers anyway. They help him more and care more, and they're way more laid back. He doesn't think one of them's ever given him shit for something stupid like chewing gum in class or wearing an 'offensive' (awesome) tee shirt. And last summer, his law teacher, Mr. Scott, actually bailed him out when he got caught stealing road signs, then told him and the rest of the class how to get out of that shit if it ever happened again.
Plus, summer school's only three days a week and he needs the other two to work, so he always gets out of babysitting his sister. It just all works out.
His first day, he catches up with some teachers and hits on a new one. She's fresh out of college and hot enough for him to at least try to fuck her over her desk before the summer's through. She shoots him down pretty much immediately, but he likes a challenge.
Tuesday he cleans the Lopez' pool and isn't exactly impressed when Santana is fooling around in her backyard with some older guy the whole time he's there. Not like she and Puck are dating or anything, but they bang on the regular and he's never been good with sharing. Plus, he knows she's only doing this to get to him and it's fucking working. He doesn't like seeing some other asshole with his hands all over her, and when the guy asks if she knows Puck, she looks his way and says, "Fuck no. He's just the pool boy." She's a bitch and he decides he's done with her. Then he goes to Brittany's and they get one another off a couple times because he knows it'll get back to Santana. Fuck it, though, 'cause she deserves it and it's been a while since he got any decent head. He's young and hot, and shit should be easier for him right now, shouldn't it?
He's gotta take chem over again 'cause that shit's hard and he spent most of his semester trying to figure out whether or not Kerry Withers wears panties. (Honestly, her jeans are low and he still doesn't have an answer. She sat in front of him all semester, so he didn't have a lot of time to focus on the periodic table, you know? How's he supposed to concentrate when there's a whole lot of skin right there in front of him?)
Anyway, he's in the lab and he's trying to pay attention. He is. He really needs to pass this class. It's just that the chem lab's windows all look out on the playing fields, and there's a girl's gym class out there right now. There's about a dozen girls running laps, and all he can think is who the fuck fails gym? But there's one girl ahead of the rest, and as she gets closer he gets a better look. She's wearing tiny shorts and a cute little McKinley tee-shirt. Her hair's up and her form is fucking awesome. He's not even just talking about her running form, though that's good, too. That's not important right now.
Rachel Berry failed gym.
He almost laughs out loud. But then Mr. Onstarck is asking him about lithium and he hates it when teachers call on him just 'cause he's not paying attention. Happens a lot. He almost considers starting to listen harder.
... ... ...
The more he thinks about it, the more fucked up it is that she's in summer school. For gym.
Look at her. She's obviously fit. He watched her do laps the other day and she's got good stamina and form. She's not overweight or lazy, and she doesn't have any weird conditions, not that he knows of. She's young and active, so what the fuck did she do or not do to fail gym?
Then one day he has baseball practice and the girls are on the next diamond and he sees it.
She's absolutely fucking terrible at team sports.
He should have known.
Obviously she's selfish and abrasive as all hell. She's irritating and always on everyone's asses about every fucking thing.
He watches her swing. It's fucking awful. The bat barely makes it across the plate and comes nowhere near the ball she shouldn't have been swinging at anyway. She stomps her foot and storms away from the plate, and he laughs. He plays short stop, and his third baseman gives him a look.
"Girls suck at sports," he explains.
Pretty true.
He watches her walk out to second base with a mitt that's too big for her, and the first ball that comes her way (a pathetic grounder) she runs away from.
"Fuck," he mumbles.
He's going to have to help her out or she'll never pass.
He waits for her after practice. Her class isn't quite over, so he pulls up some bleacher and tries not to fucking go out there and help all these girls. He knows she's seen him, but as she leaves the field, she pretends she hasn't. He laughs to himself, 'cause he'd be embarrassed too if he was that fucking terrible at baseball.
"Yo, wait up," he calls after her. He hears her sigh and she stops walking. "'Sup, slugger?"
"I was really hoping you weren't watching just to ridicule me afterward," she says. "I should have known."
"Well, you're really fucking bad." She turns away from him again and he laughs as he jogs to catch up with her. For someone so tiny, she sure walks fast. "C'mon. Slow your roll a little."
"Being in summer school is embarrassing enough without you making fun of me!"
"I'm in summer school," he says, shrugging his shoulder.
"You're not me," she snaps, throwing him a glare.
"Thank god," he says. She looks really pissed and starts walking even faster. He reaches out and grabs her arm, and she stops and turns to look at him, and he knows he has to start talking before she does or he'll never get a word in. "You need help."
"What I need is to pass gym."
He looks at her like she's slow. "Which is why you need my help. Who fails gym?"
"Someone who doesn't care about touch downs and dunks and double plays!" she yells. Wrong time to think it, but she's kind of hot when she's pissed. And sweaty. It's hot out.
"Those are three different sports," he tells her, because the way she said that let him know she has no fucking clue.
"Whatever," she mumbles, rolling her eyes. "I just need to be halfway decent at one of them so I can graduate with the required gym credits."
He takes her mitt from her hand. It's definitely from the '90's, and definitely belonged to one of her dad's. It's nice, he guesses, but old as shit and way too big for her. She grabs it back from him like him looking at it is making it suck or something.
"I said I'll help you. I play, you know." She looks like she really doesn't want to take him up on his offer, but they both know she has to if she wants any hope in hell of passing this class. "So why do you suck so hard?"
She sighs and gives him a look before she starts walking again. "I'm afraid."
"Of baseballs?" he asks. Yeah, he's been beaned by a few and it hurts, but shit, you're supposed to catch them.
"Of...balls." He's a dude, so he laughs. "Oh, my god. Be less mature, Noah." He tries to stop laughing as they approach her car. He wonders if she'll give him a lift home, 'cause his mom made him walk today so she'd have the car to take Hannah to swimming later. "At the beginning of the year, I took a dodgeball to the face and it nearly broke my nose."
He wonders why he doesn't remember that, then remembers that at the beginning of the year, he was in juvie for nearly a month.
"Oh."
"So I'm not exactly a fan of balls coming in my direction." He chokes, because he's trying not to laugh again, and she's blushing so hard it's fucking adorable.
"Come to my place and I'll help you get over that," he says. He doesn't even realize until she looks at him like he's an asshole that it could be taken as some kind of proposition. It's not even.
"You're disgusting."
"I mean because I have softer balls." She fucking giggles, then covers her mouth and looks at him with wide eyes. "Wiffle balls, from when I was a kid. You gotta get over your fear or you'll fail."
She seems to think it over, then she pulls her keys from her backpack and tells him to get in.
She's terrible. Like, really, really bad. She can't catch anything anyway, and for someone who can dance like she does, she's got absolutely no grace whatsoever with this sport. She's afraid of even the wiffle balls until she turns her back and he throws one so it hits the back of her head. She bitches at him for a good minute and a half until he asks her if it even hurt and she admits that, no, it didn't.
"Just take it, Rachel," he says, lobbing one at her. She flinches, but doesn't move away. And yeah, he's 12 sometimes, so he grins and says, "Take my balls," and her mouth drops open in disgust (he doesn't think she realizes how that looks right now) and throws one at him as hard as she can.
It barely makes it across the lawn and lands somewhere to his right between him and the fence.
He starts to question what he's gotten himself into.
... ... ...
He tells her to meet him at the diamond after his English class, and she's there in her tight-ass pants and little workout top. It's not exactly MLB issue, but there's skin and, you know, tight-ass pants, and her body is pretty awesome, so he's not going to bug her about it too much. She's tossing a baseball from her right hand into her glove. Kind of. She drops it twice before she even sees him coming towards her.
"You're late," she tells him.
"Class went long. Fucking stupid. I know how to speak English." She rolls her eyes at him like she's so much better than him at everything. "Here."
He gives her a glove from his backpack. It's black with red laces and it's fucking awesome.
"I have a glove."
"And it's huge, and you're not," he reminds her. "This was mine before I hit my growth spurt. It's all broken in and everything."
"Why are you giving this to me?" she asks. She pushes her hand into it, and for once, she looks like she might actually be able to catch a ball or something. It's not weighing down her hand.
"I'm lending it to you so you can actually lift your arm while you're wearing a glove," he tells her. "God, just get into position."
She looks at him like he's crazy. "Position?"
He rolls his eyes. "Go to second base."
She brought a bat. It's aluminum, which he figures is fine, since the girls are allowed to use them since they're lighter than the wood ones. He knows he could destroy some balls with this thing, but that's not the point of today, and there's nothing like the sound of hitting a ball with a wooden bat anyway. The ping of aluminum isn't quite the same.
Anyway, he throws a ball into the air and swings at it when it comes back down. It goes right towards her and she squeals and moves out of the way.
"Noah!" she shrieks. "What are you doing?"
"Practicing," he tells her. "You gotta catch one."
"I can't!"
"Not when you're running away from it!"
She glares at him (he can tell from even this far away) and walks over to get the ball where it landed. They're going to be here all fucking day if she takes this long to do everything. He's still trying to get her over her fear, though, so he doesn't want to rush her, really.
He tells her to get her hand ready to catch, and she actually does. She moves away less and less every time one comes at her, and then eventually he pops a ball right up into the air and she positions herself under it. Kind of. She miscalculates and it lands a few feet to her left, but she didn't run away and she had her glove up and her right hand behind it so if she'd caught it, she could have kept it. She looks at him all smiley and stuff, and he says, "Close," and tosses another ball in the air.
It takes a few more tries, but he hits a line drive way too hard, and it goes right towards her, and he drops the bat because he thinks she's going to fucking freak out at him and he's actually kind of worried that if this ball hits her, it's really going to hurt her. And even though she moves her body out of the way, she holds her glove down and closes it around the ball. It falls to the ground, but she totally had it there for a second, and he smiles because he's actually fucking proud of her.
"Noah!" she screams, rushing towards him. She's kind of half-skipping, half-running, but it's adorable. He laughs and meets her at the pitcher's mound, and she throws her arms around him. He catches her and she's kind of sweaty, but it's sexy on her. "I caught it!"
"Kinda," he chuckles.
She hits him with her glove hand. "I did!"
He doesn't really want to take away her enthusiasm, so he nods and tells her to get back out there so she can do it again.
She ends up catching about five more balls and he figures that's good enough for the day, carries her shit to her car for her and waits for her to offer him a ride home. She drops him at the curb and asks him if he wants to meet at the same time tomorrow, and he's got nothing better to do, so he says yes.
... ... ...
She's there in jeans and a tank top with skinny straps. He wonders if she's wearing it just so he can see that she's got a hot pink bra under her purple shirt. She's got on her Cons, and he likes it when she's relaxed and casual like this. Sure, she'll be back in the skirts by September, but it's not like he'll complain about that either.
He peels off his plaid button down and drops it onto the grass with her stuff on the third base line. He picks up his mitt, and then his old one, and hands it to her.
"Hi."
He grunts at her in response and stuffs his hand into his glove.
Okay, so he's in a shitty mood. Santana's being a fucking cunt and totally looking to pick a fight. All they're good at together is fucking and fighting, so it's pretty hard to resist. She's out bitching even herself, and he's fucking sick of it. Maybe he shouldn't take it out on Rachel since she did nothing wrong, but she's a girl and he's pretty annoyed with all of them right now.
He throws the ball lightly in her direction and catches her off-guard. She fumbles it a little, but keeps it off the ground. She looks at him, totally confused. "Catch," he says shortly.
"I'm bad at this."
"Yeah, Rach, that's why we're doing it," he says. He pats his mitt with his hand. He doesn't even really mind helping her, but he's not in the mood to fuck around today. "Throw the ball."
"You know, you don't have to boss me around," she says, putting her hand on her hip.
He takes a few seconds to decide whether or not he wants her pissed at him and pretty quickly realizes that he doesn't. One crazy chick on his ass is plenty, thanks anyway. So he sighs and rolls his eyes. She probably can't see from where she's standing, and that's probably for the best.
"Sorry," he mumbles. She seems okay with that, 'cause she throws the ball to him. She gets pretty pissy again when he laughs. "Tell me that's not really how you throw." The other day she was just rolling them back to him when he was batting, so he couldn't tell how bad her arm was. She glares at him. "God, you suck."
"You are really not helping."
"Just...Okay, watch how I do it." He grips the ball lightly in his hand and throws the perfect pass to her. His follow through is fucking beautiful and if she could catch worth a damn it would have landed right in her glove. "See?" he asks smugly.
"You know, this doesn't come as naturally to some people as it does to you," she bites out. He looks down her shirt when she bends to get the ball. (What? Boobs make everything - his day included - better.)
"I've been playing since I was four. It's not all just pure talent." She lobs the ball back to him and he has to lean down so he can catch it before it hits the ground. "Okay, come here," he commands. She doesn't even argue, just walks over, even if she doesn't look totally thrilled. "Stop locking your elbow and your shoulder. Loosen the hell up."
"I'm loose!" she cries.
She doesn't even realize what she's said and he kind of likes having the inside joke, so he doesn't say anything. "Sure you are. And keep your arm a little closer to your body. You look like a damn girl when you throw." She blinks. "A bad girl." She grins. "A girl who's bad at sports. Jesus. You don't have a bad bone in your body."
She blushes and looks down, and he thinks he wants to know whatever it is she's thinking about right now.
"You don't know that," she says, looking up at him from under her lashes.
Fuck, he wants to ask.
"Throw the ball," he says instead, dropping it into her glove.
Her attempt is pathetic and she groans in frustration. "I can't play this game!" she shouts, face set in this fucking cute little defeated pout.
He picks the ball up from where it dropped to the grass not 10 feet from them, chuckles as he stands in front of her and hands it back.
"Not yet," he says.
"I'm terrible," she says. She sounds and looks all sad. "I can't do it."
He doesn't like it, never has, when she's all down on herself like this. He realizes that most of the other times he's seen her like this, he's kissed her, or at least tried.
"C'mon, babe," he says. She looks up at him again. He could totally go for it, just kiss her, but he's not going to. "I'm gonna help you."
She sighs, but nods. "Why, though?"
He wishes he had a good answer, but he finds out really quickly that he doesn't.
So he shrugs his shoulder and says, "Who else is going to?" and then shows her how to hold the ball so she can throw it without it taking a nosedive to the ground.
She didn't drive today, but he did, so he tells her to get in and offers to take her home. He's got a craving for something sweet and cold, so he pulls up to the Dairy Queen drive thru and asks her what she wants. She says nothing, so he orders her a Sprite (he's seen her drinking it before) and hands it to her before taking his milkshake in his other hand.
"What's wrong?" she asks as they pull away. He turns left onto the street and shakes his head. "Noah."
"What?" he asks laughingly. It's weird, but Rachel and baseball have made him feel better. "I'm fine. You don't know me well enough to know when something's wrong."
Does she?
"Okay."
He hears her smiling and intends to ignore it. That lasts about two blocks before he's got his stupid mouth open and he's saying, "Santana's a bitch."
She laughs and sips her drink. "Yes." He chuckles and looks over at her. "Well, she is. It's not like this is information fit for the nightly news. What did she do?"
"Nothing. Everything," he says. He sounds like an idiot. Fuck. "Whatever. She's just treating me like shit."
She's quiet for a second, then just says, "Huh," and he doesn't like it, so she glares at her. "Well, it's just interesting to hear that from you. Or any boy, really."
"Yeah, well."
"So why are you worried about it? I thought you had plenty of options."
Shit. She must have heard him telling Finn that not too long ago. And damn, he has to explain it to her or she's just going to think he likes Santana or something fucking ridiculous like that.
"Okay, yeah, but Santana's, like...She's just always been there. We fight and shit, but..."
"But you keep sleeping with her," she finishes.
Okay, yes. That's it. He shrugs his shoulder and sips his shake. "She's hot as hell and a great lay," he explains.
She looks out the window and doesn't say anything more until she gets out to the car and says goodbye. He thinks maybe she's still kind of messed up over the Finn and Santana thing, even though all that shit went down a hundred years ago. Yeah, what Finn did sucked, and and everyone kind of thought they'd get over it and get back together. They didn't, though, so he can see her not really wanting to talk about how Santana is in bed, since Finn tried - and failed - to date her and ended up sleeping with her again. Santana's shallow enough to not want to date a two pump chump.
He texts Rachel when he gets home and tells her he's gotta work the next day but they can practice at night instead, and after she confirms, he lets Santana know that he won't be coming over like he said he would.
It feels good to blow her off.
... ... ...
He goes to Rachel's place and her dads sit on the back deck while he plays catch with her. He only swears once and only her dad hears, and he just laughs. They bring him lemonade and Tostitos with homemade salsa, and Rachel is smiling way too widely.
He learns that her dads know shit all about baseball, which settles the question of why he's gotta teach her this shit and one of them can't. Her 'daddy' calls her glove a 'mitten' and Puck actually says, "Oh my god," and the three Berry's laugh. He's actually kind of jealous of her with the whole two dads thing. He doesn't even have one.
Apparently her dads remember his, though, because Brian asks if David taught him to throw like that, and Puck just shrugs his shoulder and nods.
"Really?" Rachel asks. She sounds surprised, but that has nothing to do with her missing the ball. She runs to get it and he's really got to think of some way to get her to start fucking catching. "I didn't know he taught you."
"Not really important."
"I think it is," Rachel says. She tosses the ball back to him. She's getting better at that.
"It's not." He throws the ball back at her a little too hard. She knocks it down with her glove and it falls to the grass. He'd apologize, but her dad starts talking first.
"Birdie," her dad says warningly. Puck thinks that nickname is disgustingly cute.
She seems to get it, too, because she doesn't say anything else, just throws the ball back in his direction. They play catch for a while longer, and her dads go inside, claiming they don't want to miss Law & Order or some shit. Rachel holds the ball too long and he watches her, wondering what's up.
"Sorry," she says nervously. "I know I tend to push too hard."
He shrugs. If she's anything like him, apologizing isn't easy. Yeah, he could bust her balls about it, but he doesn't feel like it and she's being sincere.
"No worries," he says. He pats his glove and holds it up, and she smiles and throws the ball back at him.
She can't throw hard and they're only about a dozen feet apart, but he's kind of having fun doing this shit with her.
... ... ...
He has a dream about her. It's not that kind of dream, really, even if she does look totally hot and he's not sure why she's wearing that little plaid skirt to stand at the plate and bat. He just dreams that they're at the field at night with a few beers and she's batting. She tells him to throw softer and give her a chance, so he does and she hits the ball and starts running, then he sees her panties when her skirt flips up and...
Shit, it was totally that kind of dream, which is weird, because even if he thinks she's hot, he doesn't want to have sex with her. Much.
God, this is a bad idea. It's not like she'd ever give it up anyway, so he's basically just wasting energy better spent wanting (fantasizing) about someone else. Why get himself all worked up over a girl he'll never have? She practically has NEVER GOING TO SLEEP WITH YOU written on her forehead.
So whatever. He texts her to make sure she still wants to meet at the diamond. He has a practice today so there'll be people around after when he meets her. He thinks maybe she'll be embarrassed or something, but she says that's fine and that she'll be there with bells on, whatever the hell that means.
She sits and watches him this time. He sees her in the crowd with her back straight and her hands folded on her lap. Her hair's in a ponytail with her bangs down over her forehead. He likes it like that. She's just got a white tee shirt on with a little pocket over her left boob, and he's up to the plate next and almost forgets to step up after Ryan Taylor's walked.
He takes two strikes and fucking hates himself, 'cause he could have totally had those and he really wants to impress her or something, which is weird because she's Rachel Berry. But yeah, he's supposed to be awesome at this and teaching her, and he needs her to know that he doesn't suck.
So he pays more attention and figures out the pitcher's next move, then ends up driving one up the gap for a double, which drives a run in. He may or may not (totally does) look in Rachel's direction to see her wearing a massive smile that he kind of digs. Not a surprise that he likes people cheering for him.
Coach talks to him at the end of practice, tells him to keep his eyes on the pitcher and not the girls in the stands. It's kind of bullshit because he does do that, and there's only one girl anyway. Beiste likes to think she's all wise and shit, but whatever. She's practically Finn's biggest fan so he kind of wonders why she's grinning like that.
He wipes his forehead with his sleeve then puts his hat back on his head and walks towards Rachel. She pulls his mitt out of a purse with fucking flowers on it, and he thinks he's going to have to talk to her about that because it's really not right.
"Give me that," he says seriously. She looks confused and he jerks the glove away from her.
"What?"
"We're not using it today. And stop carrying it around in that stupid bag," he tells her, pointing to her purse. "That thing's ugly."
"It is not! It's Kate Spade!" she cries, clutching her bag to her stomach.
He doesn't know who the fuck that is, and he doesn't he care. He just knows his baseball glove doesn't belong in a goddamn purse. "Batting today."
She starts shaking her head at him. "I can't do that."
"You can't do anything, but you're managing," he argues. Maybe it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but she'll get it eventually. "Come on."
Girl has an ugly swing. Seriously, it's nasty. Like, she basically stands upright and swings the bat like it weighs a hundred pounds. Her arms are all flaily and ridiculous. Even if she did hit the ball, it'd go about three inches before stopping.
"Jesus," he mutters.
"What?" she asks, annoyed.
"That's your swing?"
"Yes! What?"
"Okay, did you not see me? I'm awesome. You suck. I hit the ball. You can't even hit air," he tells her.
"That's not very nice," she pouts, setting the tip of her bat on the plate. He rolls his eyes and starts walking towards her. "Is this the part where you give up? Tell me I'm being a brat?"
"Well, you are, but no," he says. He drops his glove onto the grass when he gets closer and she looks at him like he's nuts. She backs away when he reaches out for her. "Come here."
"What are you doing?" she asks. He puts his hand on her hip and grabs the bat with the other. He brings it up in front of her and nudges her arm so she'll grip the bat. "Noah."
"Showing you how to do this without looking like you don't know anything about anything or sports."
She turns to look at him over her shoulder, and he just grins at her and pushes at her shoulder with his so she turns back around. "Keep your hands close together. Don't choke it."
"I don't know what that means!" she whines.
"Don't hold too tight." She loosens her grip too much, so she's barely touching it. "Well, you have to hold it some."
He'd liken it to a hand job if he thought she'd ever given one.
She does it the way he shows her and then nods. "Okay. That feels good."
He's pressed up against her with his arms around her, and yeah, good is a pretty fair description. "Bend your knees a bit." She does, but she's still all stiff, so he pushes at the back of her leg with his knee. Her leg buckles a little bit and she squeals, but he curves his hand around her hip again and laughs. "Relax," he says. "It's about the hips."
"Hips?" she squeaks. "I thought you swung with your arms."
"Yeah, and you can't swing for shit." He laughs again when she actually giggles. "Follow through with your hips so you swing with your whole body."
He helps her move the bat a couple times, and the more she does it, the looser she gets, the better her swing. And yeah, he could probably let her go now and do this on her own, but he's kind of remembering that her body feels as nice as it looks, and he's just going to take advantage of that for a few more seconds. God, her ass is unreal. He can feel it against him every time she moves her hips, and when he slides his hand up her arm to her elbow, then down her side so he's holding both her hips over her jeans, he honestly thinks he's going to do something stupid. Like grind against her or kiss her or tell her fuck baseball and he'll teach her about sex instead.
"You wanna get out of here?" he asks abruptly.
He notices her breathing is a little laboured when she nods and says, "Yes."
They stop at Dairy Queen before going to her house, and he uses her laptop (seriously, does everything of hers have to be covered in flowers?) to Youtube videos of Ken Griffey Jr. because he has the best swing of any baseball player ever, in Puck's opinion. He also turns on a game on her bedroom television and she says she didn't even know their satellite package came with sports channels.
She pulls her hair from its ponytail and he watches her shake it with her fingers, comb them through as she makes a face. "What?" she asks.
"Nothing. You look like you're in pain."
"I typically don't wear my hair up," she explains. He figures that was just one of those girly moments he'll never really understand. "Who does Ken play for?"
He rolls his eyes. "You're on a first name basis now? Usually you call athletes by their last names."
She looks like she's about to stick her tongue out at him. "I can do whatever I want." Then she giggles and he can't help smiling as he shakes his head. Part of him wonders if they're, like, friends or something now.
"He's retired."
"Oh." She looks at the screen and watches the at-bat until the crowd on the television starts making a lot of noise and they both look over at it. There's a manager arguing with the umpire. Puck knows he's about to get tossed out. Rachel looks pretty interested in this. "I can read lips, you know. He's not saying very nice things."
Puck just laughs and closes her laptop, sets it at the end of her bed and leans back against her pillows. Her dads aren't home and the way she's sitting right now, he can see the very top of her purple panties peeking out from the back of her jeans. It's not like he ever thought Rachel was ugly or anything, but knowing he's alone with her right now makes her just about the hottest girl on the fucking planet. He hasn't been laid in far too long, since Santana's being the way she's being and he's been busy.
His phone rings, which makes him look away from Rachel's ass just in time for her to not catch him looking when she turns her head. He grabs his phone from his pocket and sees Santana's name there, and he hits the ignore button. Rachel makes this little scoffing sound and turns around again.
"What?" he asks, confused.
"Nothing."
"She's being stupid. I'm not signing up to listen to it," he explains. "She doesn't answer her fucking phone, so why should I answer mine?"
Rachel laughs again and shakes her head, turns back to the television and cheers for the wrong team when they hit the ball. It's cute, though, so he doesn't correct her. Besides, she doesn't know that the Twins are better than Kansas City.
When he leaves, she tells him she's got plans tomorrow and won't be able to practice, and he acts like it's really no big deal, but he's wondering who she has plans with and why she looked like she was blushing when she said that.
... ... ...
He hears through the grapevine that she's going on a date with one of the guys from Dalton. Kurt and Blaine set it up, and Rachel said yes. Finn tells Puck this. For a second, Puck thinks Finn's really, really jealous. He's only a little jealous, apparently, and then drops the thing all together.
Puck? He's feeling weird about it. For one thing, maybe it's wrong, but he kind of thought all the guys from Dalton were gay. Generalization, he knows, but whatever. He only knows two of them and they're, you know, dating, so he didn't really know any different.
And he's been hanging out with her every day and now she's off on a date with some other dude.
He and Finn destroy a super huge bag of Doritos and drink some Cokes, and then Puck heads over to Santana's. He's feeling like he needs some attention, okay? She asks him why the fuck he didn't answer his phone yesterday, and he tells her he lost it. It's a good thing he left it in his truck. It's not like needs her pulling it from his pocket (she would, too) and seeing that it's working just fine and he was just being a dick.
It's fast and dirty, because she likes it like that, and it doesn't really make him feel much better.
He's driving home after and wonders if Rachel even likes this other guy. Not that he cares or it's any of his business or anything.
... ... ...
He's not going to bring it up. If she wants to tell him about the date, she can. He's not going to ask her how it went and if she gave it up, because that'll make it look like he's interested, which he's not.
He can tell immediately that she's not herself. She's introverted and doesn't even say anything when he mentions what he did last night. He doesn't exactly mince words, and she just nods like she's only pretending to listen.
"What the fuck's with the zombie act?"
"Pardon? Nothing," she says quickly. "Can we practice hitting today?"
That's not what he had planned.
"No. What's wrong with you?" he asks seriously. She shakes her head, but he's got the ball in his hand and he's not starting this practice until she gives him some fucking information.
"Did you really sleep with Santana last night?" she asks abruptly. He's kind of weirded out by her calm tone as she asks, so he just shrugs his shoulders. "Was..."
He steps towards her. "What?"
"Nothing."
"Rachel, fucking talk." She looks up at him and he's actually a little worried. This is really some twilight zone bullshit right now. "What?"
"I had a date," she says. He acts like he had no idea, which is to say he just looks at her until she keeps talking. "It's not like I thought it was going to be a big romance or something, but..." She sighs and looks away. "Boys just don't want me."
He looks her up and down while she's not paying attention. "Sure, they do."
"Right," she scoffs, laughing humourlessly. Her eyes land on him again. "You're off having sex with Santana on a regular basis and I can't even get a boy to kiss me once."
He wants to laugh at her, but she'll probably never talk to him again and he's not prepared for that shit right now. "That's 'cause she's a slut and I have no standards." She laughs, but he can tell she doesn't really mean it. "You're hot, Rachel, you just gotta fuckin'...relax a little bit sometimes."
"I don't know how to do that," she admits. "I'm high strung by nature." She looks at him pensively. "And thank you for saying I'm hot."
He shrugs. "You are," he says again. He should stop that. "And yeah, you can. You're relaxed when we're fucking around out here."
She laughs. "That's because I'm awful and if I cared any more than this, I'd end up in tears."
He tosses the ball to her and she catches it pretty easily. "You won't be awful by the time I'm done with you," he promises.
She gives him this fucking winning smile and he really doesn't mind cheering her up.
... ... ...
He also doesn't mind knowing she didn't let some other dude get at her.
... ... ...
He's buying new shoes because he needs them and he has the money to do it, and he sees this girl's Indians hat on the shelf. He knows she hates wearing her hair up, and this hat has the hole in the back with the adjustable size thing, so she could just slip her hair through there and it'd be better for her or something.
He only buys it because it's on sale.
Not because he thinks she'll look fucking hot in it.
... ... ...
She's walking up his driveway wearing a black skirt and a white tank top.
Not exactly the right thing to wear for batting practice, but her legs look killer and her skin's all tanned.
"Nice uniform," he calls to her from the porch.
"I have someplace to be after this," she says. He doesn't really believe her.
"Here." He hands the hat to her and she gives him this stupid smile and he looks away.
"What is this?"
"Yours."
She looks really fucking hot when she pulls her hair up and slips it through the hole in the back, and it's not just because her tits are pressed up and together when she raises her arms. She pulls the hat down over her forehead and looks at him.
"Does it look okay?"
He wonders if she's as desperate now as she sounded the other day. 'Cause fuck, he kind of thinks he wants to fuck her. Like, right now; show her that yeah, guys want her. He wants her.
"Yeah," he says nonchalantly. He leads her around to the back of the house where he's got the batting tee set up, and she lets out a huff and puts her hands on her hips. "What?"
"Are you serious? Noah, I'm not four," she snaps. "I can hit a pitch."
He barks out a laugh and looks at her doubtfully. "Really? 'Cause I have yet to see that."
She crosses her arms and stands her ground, and there's something really fucking hot about it. "I'm not doing this. I'm not using that. It's humiliating," she insists.
"Yeah, I'm sure all these people really care right now," he says sarcastically, gesturing with his arms to his empty backyard. "Get the bat, move your ass, and try to hit the ball more than two feet."
"You know, you could stand to be nicer to me," she says.
"Don't hold your breath." She gets the bat, but she doesn't move to the tee. Instead, she tells him that he's going to pitch to her, and that's final. "Okay," he says with a grin. "I'll give you ten pitches. If you miss more than five, you have to use the tee."
"Fine," she says smugly, like she's won some kind of argument.
It's kind of cute, how she thinks she's good enough to hit at least five pitches when she can barely even remember how to hold the bat.
He goes easy on her. He doesn't want her to start crying or some shit, so he lobs a couple balls at her and she swings for the fences and hits nothing but a whole lot of air. Her form is completely shit again, even if she is bending her knees, and he knows that even if she does hit one of these, it's not like it's going far.
The bat grazes pitch #4, but nothing happens after that, and she asks if it counts, so he says yes just to make her happy. (Apparently he cares about shit like that.) Pitch #5, she misses completely, and she's pissed at herself and he's smiling.
"Miss this one and you lose."
"Shut up, Noah, I know."
Fuck, she's kind of super hot when she's snapping at him like that.
She swings, hits nothing, and drops the bat onto the ground, groans so loudly in frustration that it almost freaks him out, and then looks at him like she's waiting for him to say something shitty. Well damn, he knows how pissed she is right now and he doesn't want to poke the bear.
"Pick it up," he says as he walks towards her.
He wonders if she means to bend down right in front of him. He almost sees her panties, but her skirt won't ride up that high. Shame, too, 'cause, you know, panties.
They go through the batting stance like they did the other day, only this time he touches her less and she seems to retain more. Maybe she's less distracted or something. She swings at the ball on the tee and hits the ball further than a foot, so he deems that a success. He gives her a few tips and she starts hitting the ball further and further. She gets one all the way to the fence at the edge of his yard, about 30 feet away, and she lets out this squeal and jumps up.
Panties. Purple ones that cover her ass nicely, but not too much.
She doesn't even seem to notice, and when she turns around to look at him, she can't tell he was just checking her out or that he's thinking of how she'd look on his bed (or the grass; he's not picky) as he pulled those panties down off her hips.
"Nice," he says. He doesn't know what he's talking about, really, but it works no matter what.
"That was perfect and you know it," she says, hand on hip.
He just smiles and looks at the inside of her thigh, 'cause she's got her weight on one leg and the other looks all fucking hot there.
"Yeah. Perfect."
She still doesn't know when a dude's checking her out. If he wanted her to know, he'd give her lessons in that, too.
He walks her home after, because he's got nothing better to do and he wants to.
She's laughing with him and totally fucking flirting (whether she realizes it or not) and pushing at his arm when he makes fun of her or laughs at her.
Apparently that other thing she had to do after their practice was nothing, because he walks her to her door and she says she's got the rest of the day free. She doesn't realize what she's said or anything, and she's just kind of a huge liar.
He smirks to himself after she closes the door, 'cause yeah, she wore a skirt for a reason, and he wonders if she picked out those panties just for him, too.
... ... ...
Two can play this little game.
It's hot as hell, so when he meets her at the diamond after his Chem class, he pulls his shirt off and doesn't let on that he can see her checking him out. She totally is and he totally can.
She may not want him, really, and she still seems to think she's not nearly as fuckable as she is, but whatever. He likes the idea of corrupting the hell out of her, even if she has no idea he wants to.
She's selfish. She's a brat who cares more about herself than anyone else she knows, and he's aware of that. They're the same that way, and it's probably one of the reasons their relationship crashed. That, and a whole lot of other things.
She's wearing these tight as hell little shorts right now, and a top that might as well be painted on. He's not complaining. He wonders what they were playing in gym today.
"I'm really tired," she tells him right away. "We ran long distance today."
"You win?" he asks. It probably wasn't really a race, but if he knows anything about her at all, he knows she treated it like one. She grins slowly and he knows she's got better stamina than the overweight girls in her class. (But hey, bless 'em for being active, right?) "Good."
"Can we do something easy?" she asks sweetly. He's kind of distracted by the outline of her tits in that shirt, and she seems pretty distracted by the fact that he's not wearing one at all. "Maybe we could just..."
"What?"
She shrugs her shoulder, and he notices the sweat on her skin. "The Indians are playing this afternoon, aren't they?"
So that's how they end up walking to his house. He's got his shirt tucked into the back of his shorts and she pulls her hair up into a messy knot thing, and he puts his hand around her waist when she's about to step in a wad of gum. He pulls her against him and her breath hitches. It's pretty fucked up that it takes him a minute to let go, and when he does, she runs her hand over her side, and he doesn't really know what that means.
He gets them ice cream from the freezer at his place and points the fan right at them as they sit on the couch. He explains a few things to her, like the ground rule double and that your first two fouls are strikes. She asks him a couple things that make him roll his eyes, like why the second baseman for Toronto has his pants tucked into his socks, and why they eat so many sunflower seeds.
She's such a girl. He knows she is, obviously, because he's been sneaking looks down her shirt all day and the way she'd licked her spoon earlier totally gave him a semi, but damn, he wishes she knew more about sports.
It's still super hot that she's so serious about learning.
She blushes when he tells her that, and then she mentions something about having to be someplace to do whatever, and he checks out her ass as she bends over to tie her shoes.
... ... ...
She comes to his next baseball game. She's alone in the stands with her hands tucked under her thighs and these little denim shorts on. She smiles at him when he looks her way, and he's pretty shocked she doesn't, like, wave and yell his name or something. She used to do that the first time she and Finn dated, and shit was embarrassing for everyone.
He sees her cheering when he makes a tough catch and throws out the guy running to first. He feels pretty smug about it. She's one of about 20 people who came to watch the game, and she's the only one this into it.
After the win, his teammates are talking about going out and finding some beers, which he's all for. Rachel just waves subtly, grabs her keys from her purse and walks away from the field with a smile on her face.
And he kind of thinks it sucked, today, to not be able to hang out with her.
... ... ...
"Why'd you come?" he asks her as they play catch. She actually manages to catch more balls than she drops, so he figures that's progress.
She shrugs her shoulder and tosses a ball back to him. Yeah, her arm could use some work. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Rachel," he laughs.
"I had nothing better to do," she admits kind of quietly. "And I wanted to."
He grins, tells her to stop holding the ball so hard, and has her throwing a little harder by the time they leave so he can drive her home.
...Part II...
Chapter: 1/2
Rating: R
Character: Puck/Rachel
Summary: Rachel fails gym, and Puck takes it upon himself to make sure she doesn't flunk out of summer school, too. That's how he finds himself teaching her how to play baseball. Fictable Prompt #16 - Weakness.
Word Count: 19,000 (total)
Disclaimer: Don't own.
To be honest, he doesn't even hate summer school all that much. Sure, he, you know, has to go to school in the summer, but he's been doing it so long that it's kind of a tradition now. It's like the teachers expect him, and he wouldn't want to let them down or anything. They're way more awesome than everyday teachers anyway. They help him more and care more, and they're way more laid back. He doesn't think one of them's ever given him shit for something stupid like chewing gum in class or wearing an 'offensive' (awesome) tee shirt. And last summer, his law teacher, Mr. Scott, actually bailed him out when he got caught stealing road signs, then told him and the rest of the class how to get out of that shit if it ever happened again.
Plus, summer school's only three days a week and he needs the other two to work, so he always gets out of babysitting his sister. It just all works out.
His first day, he catches up with some teachers and hits on a new one. She's fresh out of college and hot enough for him to at least try to fuck her over her desk before the summer's through. She shoots him down pretty much immediately, but he likes a challenge.
Tuesday he cleans the Lopez' pool and isn't exactly impressed when Santana is fooling around in her backyard with some older guy the whole time he's there. Not like she and Puck are dating or anything, but they bang on the regular and he's never been good with sharing. Plus, he knows she's only doing this to get to him and it's fucking working. He doesn't like seeing some other asshole with his hands all over her, and when the guy asks if she knows Puck, she looks his way and says, "Fuck no. He's just the pool boy." She's a bitch and he decides he's done with her. Then he goes to Brittany's and they get one another off a couple times because he knows it'll get back to Santana. Fuck it, though, 'cause she deserves it and it's been a while since he got any decent head. He's young and hot, and shit should be easier for him right now, shouldn't it?
He's gotta take chem over again 'cause that shit's hard and he spent most of his semester trying to figure out whether or not Kerry Withers wears panties. (Honestly, her jeans are low and he still doesn't have an answer. She sat in front of him all semester, so he didn't have a lot of time to focus on the periodic table, you know? How's he supposed to concentrate when there's a whole lot of skin right there in front of him?)
Anyway, he's in the lab and he's trying to pay attention. He is. He really needs to pass this class. It's just that the chem lab's windows all look out on the playing fields, and there's a girl's gym class out there right now. There's about a dozen girls running laps, and all he can think is who the fuck fails gym? But there's one girl ahead of the rest, and as she gets closer he gets a better look. She's wearing tiny shorts and a cute little McKinley tee-shirt. Her hair's up and her form is fucking awesome. He's not even just talking about her running form, though that's good, too. That's not important right now.
Rachel Berry failed gym.
He almost laughs out loud. But then Mr. Onstarck is asking him about lithium and he hates it when teachers call on him just 'cause he's not paying attention. Happens a lot. He almost considers starting to listen harder.
... ... ...
The more he thinks about it, the more fucked up it is that she's in summer school. For gym.
Look at her. She's obviously fit. He watched her do laps the other day and she's got good stamina and form. She's not overweight or lazy, and she doesn't have any weird conditions, not that he knows of. She's young and active, so what the fuck did she do or not do to fail gym?
Then one day he has baseball practice and the girls are on the next diamond and he sees it.
She's absolutely fucking terrible at team sports.
He should have known.
Obviously she's selfish and abrasive as all hell. She's irritating and always on everyone's asses about every fucking thing.
He watches her swing. It's fucking awful. The bat barely makes it across the plate and comes nowhere near the ball she shouldn't have been swinging at anyway. She stomps her foot and storms away from the plate, and he laughs. He plays short stop, and his third baseman gives him a look.
"Girls suck at sports," he explains.
Pretty true.
He watches her walk out to second base with a mitt that's too big for her, and the first ball that comes her way (a pathetic grounder) she runs away from.
"Fuck," he mumbles.
He's going to have to help her out or she'll never pass.
He waits for her after practice. Her class isn't quite over, so he pulls up some bleacher and tries not to fucking go out there and help all these girls. He knows she's seen him, but as she leaves the field, she pretends she hasn't. He laughs to himself, 'cause he'd be embarrassed too if he was that fucking terrible at baseball.
"Yo, wait up," he calls after her. He hears her sigh and she stops walking. "'Sup, slugger?"
"I was really hoping you weren't watching just to ridicule me afterward," she says. "I should have known."
"Well, you're really fucking bad." She turns away from him again and he laughs as he jogs to catch up with her. For someone so tiny, she sure walks fast. "C'mon. Slow your roll a little."
"Being in summer school is embarrassing enough without you making fun of me!"
"I'm in summer school," he says, shrugging his shoulder.
"You're not me," she snaps, throwing him a glare.
"Thank god," he says. She looks really pissed and starts walking even faster. He reaches out and grabs her arm, and she stops and turns to look at him, and he knows he has to start talking before she does or he'll never get a word in. "You need help."
"What I need is to pass gym."
He looks at her like she's slow. "Which is why you need my help. Who fails gym?"
"Someone who doesn't care about touch downs and dunks and double plays!" she yells. Wrong time to think it, but she's kind of hot when she's pissed. And sweaty. It's hot out.
"Those are three different sports," he tells her, because the way she said that let him know she has no fucking clue.
"Whatever," she mumbles, rolling her eyes. "I just need to be halfway decent at one of them so I can graduate with the required gym credits."
He takes her mitt from her hand. It's definitely from the '90's, and definitely belonged to one of her dad's. It's nice, he guesses, but old as shit and way too big for her. She grabs it back from him like him looking at it is making it suck or something.
"I said I'll help you. I play, you know." She looks like she really doesn't want to take him up on his offer, but they both know she has to if she wants any hope in hell of passing this class. "So why do you suck so hard?"
She sighs and gives him a look before she starts walking again. "I'm afraid."
"Of baseballs?" he asks. Yeah, he's been beaned by a few and it hurts, but shit, you're supposed to catch them.
"Of...balls." He's a dude, so he laughs. "Oh, my god. Be less mature, Noah." He tries to stop laughing as they approach her car. He wonders if she'll give him a lift home, 'cause his mom made him walk today so she'd have the car to take Hannah to swimming later. "At the beginning of the year, I took a dodgeball to the face and it nearly broke my nose."
He wonders why he doesn't remember that, then remembers that at the beginning of the year, he was in juvie for nearly a month.
"Oh."
"So I'm not exactly a fan of balls coming in my direction." He chokes, because he's trying not to laugh again, and she's blushing so hard it's fucking adorable.
"Come to my place and I'll help you get over that," he says. He doesn't even realize until she looks at him like he's an asshole that it could be taken as some kind of proposition. It's not even.
"You're disgusting."
"I mean because I have softer balls." She fucking giggles, then covers her mouth and looks at him with wide eyes. "Wiffle balls, from when I was a kid. You gotta get over your fear or you'll fail."
She seems to think it over, then she pulls her keys from her backpack and tells him to get in.
She's terrible. Like, really, really bad. She can't catch anything anyway, and for someone who can dance like she does, she's got absolutely no grace whatsoever with this sport. She's afraid of even the wiffle balls until she turns her back and he throws one so it hits the back of her head. She bitches at him for a good minute and a half until he asks her if it even hurt and she admits that, no, it didn't.
"Just take it, Rachel," he says, lobbing one at her. She flinches, but doesn't move away. And yeah, he's 12 sometimes, so he grins and says, "Take my balls," and her mouth drops open in disgust (he doesn't think she realizes how that looks right now) and throws one at him as hard as she can.
It barely makes it across the lawn and lands somewhere to his right between him and the fence.
He starts to question what he's gotten himself into.
... ... ...
He tells her to meet him at the diamond after his English class, and she's there in her tight-ass pants and little workout top. It's not exactly MLB issue, but there's skin and, you know, tight-ass pants, and her body is pretty awesome, so he's not going to bug her about it too much. She's tossing a baseball from her right hand into her glove. Kind of. She drops it twice before she even sees him coming towards her.
"You're late," she tells him.
"Class went long. Fucking stupid. I know how to speak English." She rolls her eyes at him like she's so much better than him at everything. "Here."
He gives her a glove from his backpack. It's black with red laces and it's fucking awesome.
"I have a glove."
"And it's huge, and you're not," he reminds her. "This was mine before I hit my growth spurt. It's all broken in and everything."
"Why are you giving this to me?" she asks. She pushes her hand into it, and for once, she looks like she might actually be able to catch a ball or something. It's not weighing down her hand.
"I'm lending it to you so you can actually lift your arm while you're wearing a glove," he tells her. "God, just get into position."
She looks at him like he's crazy. "Position?"
He rolls his eyes. "Go to second base."
She brought a bat. It's aluminum, which he figures is fine, since the girls are allowed to use them since they're lighter than the wood ones. He knows he could destroy some balls with this thing, but that's not the point of today, and there's nothing like the sound of hitting a ball with a wooden bat anyway. The ping of aluminum isn't quite the same.
Anyway, he throws a ball into the air and swings at it when it comes back down. It goes right towards her and she squeals and moves out of the way.
"Noah!" she shrieks. "What are you doing?"
"Practicing," he tells her. "You gotta catch one."
"I can't!"
"Not when you're running away from it!"
She glares at him (he can tell from even this far away) and walks over to get the ball where it landed. They're going to be here all fucking day if she takes this long to do everything. He's still trying to get her over her fear, though, so he doesn't want to rush her, really.
He tells her to get her hand ready to catch, and she actually does. She moves away less and less every time one comes at her, and then eventually he pops a ball right up into the air and she positions herself under it. Kind of. She miscalculates and it lands a few feet to her left, but she didn't run away and she had her glove up and her right hand behind it so if she'd caught it, she could have kept it. She looks at him all smiley and stuff, and he says, "Close," and tosses another ball in the air.
It takes a few more tries, but he hits a line drive way too hard, and it goes right towards her, and he drops the bat because he thinks she's going to fucking freak out at him and he's actually kind of worried that if this ball hits her, it's really going to hurt her. And even though she moves her body out of the way, she holds her glove down and closes it around the ball. It falls to the ground, but she totally had it there for a second, and he smiles because he's actually fucking proud of her.
"Noah!" she screams, rushing towards him. She's kind of half-skipping, half-running, but it's adorable. He laughs and meets her at the pitcher's mound, and she throws her arms around him. He catches her and she's kind of sweaty, but it's sexy on her. "I caught it!"
"Kinda," he chuckles.
She hits him with her glove hand. "I did!"
He doesn't really want to take away her enthusiasm, so he nods and tells her to get back out there so she can do it again.
She ends up catching about five more balls and he figures that's good enough for the day, carries her shit to her car for her and waits for her to offer him a ride home. She drops him at the curb and asks him if he wants to meet at the same time tomorrow, and he's got nothing better to do, so he says yes.
... ... ...
She's there in jeans and a tank top with skinny straps. He wonders if she's wearing it just so he can see that she's got a hot pink bra under her purple shirt. She's got on her Cons, and he likes it when she's relaxed and casual like this. Sure, she'll be back in the skirts by September, but it's not like he'll complain about that either.
He peels off his plaid button down and drops it onto the grass with her stuff on the third base line. He picks up his mitt, and then his old one, and hands it to her.
"Hi."
He grunts at her in response and stuffs his hand into his glove.
Okay, so he's in a shitty mood. Santana's being a fucking cunt and totally looking to pick a fight. All they're good at together is fucking and fighting, so it's pretty hard to resist. She's out bitching even herself, and he's fucking sick of it. Maybe he shouldn't take it out on Rachel since she did nothing wrong, but she's a girl and he's pretty annoyed with all of them right now.
He throws the ball lightly in her direction and catches her off-guard. She fumbles it a little, but keeps it off the ground. She looks at him, totally confused. "Catch," he says shortly.
"I'm bad at this."
"Yeah, Rach, that's why we're doing it," he says. He pats his mitt with his hand. He doesn't even really mind helping her, but he's not in the mood to fuck around today. "Throw the ball."
"You know, you don't have to boss me around," she says, putting her hand on her hip.
He takes a few seconds to decide whether or not he wants her pissed at him and pretty quickly realizes that he doesn't. One crazy chick on his ass is plenty, thanks anyway. So he sighs and rolls his eyes. She probably can't see from where she's standing, and that's probably for the best.
"Sorry," he mumbles. She seems okay with that, 'cause she throws the ball to him. She gets pretty pissy again when he laughs. "Tell me that's not really how you throw." The other day she was just rolling them back to him when he was batting, so he couldn't tell how bad her arm was. She glares at him. "God, you suck."
"You are really not helping."
"Just...Okay, watch how I do it." He grips the ball lightly in his hand and throws the perfect pass to her. His follow through is fucking beautiful and if she could catch worth a damn it would have landed right in her glove. "See?" he asks smugly.
"You know, this doesn't come as naturally to some people as it does to you," she bites out. He looks down her shirt when she bends to get the ball. (What? Boobs make everything - his day included - better.)
"I've been playing since I was four. It's not all just pure talent." She lobs the ball back to him and he has to lean down so he can catch it before it hits the ground. "Okay, come here," he commands. She doesn't even argue, just walks over, even if she doesn't look totally thrilled. "Stop locking your elbow and your shoulder. Loosen the hell up."
"I'm loose!" she cries.
She doesn't even realize what she's said and he kind of likes having the inside joke, so he doesn't say anything. "Sure you are. And keep your arm a little closer to your body. You look like a damn girl when you throw." She blinks. "A bad girl." She grins. "A girl who's bad at sports. Jesus. You don't have a bad bone in your body."
She blushes and looks down, and he thinks he wants to know whatever it is she's thinking about right now.
"You don't know that," she says, looking up at him from under her lashes.
Fuck, he wants to ask.
"Throw the ball," he says instead, dropping it into her glove.
Her attempt is pathetic and she groans in frustration. "I can't play this game!" she shouts, face set in this fucking cute little defeated pout.
He picks the ball up from where it dropped to the grass not 10 feet from them, chuckles as he stands in front of her and hands it back.
"Not yet," he says.
"I'm terrible," she says. She sounds and looks all sad. "I can't do it."
He doesn't like it, never has, when she's all down on herself like this. He realizes that most of the other times he's seen her like this, he's kissed her, or at least tried.
"C'mon, babe," he says. She looks up at him again. He could totally go for it, just kiss her, but he's not going to. "I'm gonna help you."
She sighs, but nods. "Why, though?"
He wishes he had a good answer, but he finds out really quickly that he doesn't.
So he shrugs his shoulder and says, "Who else is going to?" and then shows her how to hold the ball so she can throw it without it taking a nosedive to the ground.
She didn't drive today, but he did, so he tells her to get in and offers to take her home. He's got a craving for something sweet and cold, so he pulls up to the Dairy Queen drive thru and asks her what she wants. She says nothing, so he orders her a Sprite (he's seen her drinking it before) and hands it to her before taking his milkshake in his other hand.
"What's wrong?" she asks as they pull away. He turns left onto the street and shakes his head. "Noah."
"What?" he asks laughingly. It's weird, but Rachel and baseball have made him feel better. "I'm fine. You don't know me well enough to know when something's wrong."
Does she?
"Okay."
He hears her smiling and intends to ignore it. That lasts about two blocks before he's got his stupid mouth open and he's saying, "Santana's a bitch."
She laughs and sips her drink. "Yes." He chuckles and looks over at her. "Well, she is. It's not like this is information fit for the nightly news. What did she do?"
"Nothing. Everything," he says. He sounds like an idiot. Fuck. "Whatever. She's just treating me like shit."
She's quiet for a second, then just says, "Huh," and he doesn't like it, so she glares at her. "Well, it's just interesting to hear that from you. Or any boy, really."
"Yeah, well."
"So why are you worried about it? I thought you had plenty of options."
Shit. She must have heard him telling Finn that not too long ago. And damn, he has to explain it to her or she's just going to think he likes Santana or something fucking ridiculous like that.
"Okay, yeah, but Santana's, like...She's just always been there. We fight and shit, but..."
"But you keep sleeping with her," she finishes.
Okay, yes. That's it. He shrugs his shoulder and sips his shake. "She's hot as hell and a great lay," he explains.
She looks out the window and doesn't say anything more until she gets out to the car and says goodbye. He thinks maybe she's still kind of messed up over the Finn and Santana thing, even though all that shit went down a hundred years ago. Yeah, what Finn did sucked, and and everyone kind of thought they'd get over it and get back together. They didn't, though, so he can see her not really wanting to talk about how Santana is in bed, since Finn tried - and failed - to date her and ended up sleeping with her again. Santana's shallow enough to not want to date a two pump chump.
He texts Rachel when he gets home and tells her he's gotta work the next day but they can practice at night instead, and after she confirms, he lets Santana know that he won't be coming over like he said he would.
It feels good to blow her off.
... ... ...
He goes to Rachel's place and her dads sit on the back deck while he plays catch with her. He only swears once and only her dad hears, and he just laughs. They bring him lemonade and Tostitos with homemade salsa, and Rachel is smiling way too widely.
He learns that her dads know shit all about baseball, which settles the question of why he's gotta teach her this shit and one of them can't. Her 'daddy' calls her glove a 'mitten' and Puck actually says, "Oh my god," and the three Berry's laugh. He's actually kind of jealous of her with the whole two dads thing. He doesn't even have one.
Apparently her dads remember his, though, because Brian asks if David taught him to throw like that, and Puck just shrugs his shoulder and nods.
"Really?" Rachel asks. She sounds surprised, but that has nothing to do with her missing the ball. She runs to get it and he's really got to think of some way to get her to start fucking catching. "I didn't know he taught you."
"Not really important."
"I think it is," Rachel says. She tosses the ball back to him. She's getting better at that.
"It's not." He throws the ball back at her a little too hard. She knocks it down with her glove and it falls to the grass. He'd apologize, but her dad starts talking first.
"Birdie," her dad says warningly. Puck thinks that nickname is disgustingly cute.
She seems to get it, too, because she doesn't say anything else, just throws the ball back in his direction. They play catch for a while longer, and her dads go inside, claiming they don't want to miss Law & Order or some shit. Rachel holds the ball too long and he watches her, wondering what's up.
"Sorry," she says nervously. "I know I tend to push too hard."
He shrugs. If she's anything like him, apologizing isn't easy. Yeah, he could bust her balls about it, but he doesn't feel like it and she's being sincere.
"No worries," he says. He pats his glove and holds it up, and she smiles and throws the ball back at him.
She can't throw hard and they're only about a dozen feet apart, but he's kind of having fun doing this shit with her.
... ... ...
He has a dream about her. It's not that kind of dream, really, even if she does look totally hot and he's not sure why she's wearing that little plaid skirt to stand at the plate and bat. He just dreams that they're at the field at night with a few beers and she's batting. She tells him to throw softer and give her a chance, so he does and she hits the ball and starts running, then he sees her panties when her skirt flips up and...
Shit, it was totally that kind of dream, which is weird, because even if he thinks she's hot, he doesn't want to have sex with her. Much.
God, this is a bad idea. It's not like she'd ever give it up anyway, so he's basically just wasting energy better spent wanting (fantasizing) about someone else. Why get himself all worked up over a girl he'll never have? She practically has NEVER GOING TO SLEEP WITH YOU written on her forehead.
So whatever. He texts her to make sure she still wants to meet at the diamond. He has a practice today so there'll be people around after when he meets her. He thinks maybe she'll be embarrassed or something, but she says that's fine and that she'll be there with bells on, whatever the hell that means.
She sits and watches him this time. He sees her in the crowd with her back straight and her hands folded on her lap. Her hair's in a ponytail with her bangs down over her forehead. He likes it like that. She's just got a white tee shirt on with a little pocket over her left boob, and he's up to the plate next and almost forgets to step up after Ryan Taylor's walked.
He takes two strikes and fucking hates himself, 'cause he could have totally had those and he really wants to impress her or something, which is weird because she's Rachel Berry. But yeah, he's supposed to be awesome at this and teaching her, and he needs her to know that he doesn't suck.
So he pays more attention and figures out the pitcher's next move, then ends up driving one up the gap for a double, which drives a run in. He may or may not (totally does) look in Rachel's direction to see her wearing a massive smile that he kind of digs. Not a surprise that he likes people cheering for him.
Coach talks to him at the end of practice, tells him to keep his eyes on the pitcher and not the girls in the stands. It's kind of bullshit because he does do that, and there's only one girl anyway. Beiste likes to think she's all wise and shit, but whatever. She's practically Finn's biggest fan so he kind of wonders why she's grinning like that.
He wipes his forehead with his sleeve then puts his hat back on his head and walks towards Rachel. She pulls his mitt out of a purse with fucking flowers on it, and he thinks he's going to have to talk to her about that because it's really not right.
"Give me that," he says seriously. She looks confused and he jerks the glove away from her.
"What?"
"We're not using it today. And stop carrying it around in that stupid bag," he tells her, pointing to her purse. "That thing's ugly."
"It is not! It's Kate Spade!" she cries, clutching her bag to her stomach.
He doesn't know who the fuck that is, and he doesn't he care. He just knows his baseball glove doesn't belong in a goddamn purse. "Batting today."
She starts shaking her head at him. "I can't do that."
"You can't do anything, but you're managing," he argues. Maybe it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but she'll get it eventually. "Come on."
Girl has an ugly swing. Seriously, it's nasty. Like, she basically stands upright and swings the bat like it weighs a hundred pounds. Her arms are all flaily and ridiculous. Even if she did hit the ball, it'd go about three inches before stopping.
"Jesus," he mutters.
"What?" she asks, annoyed.
"That's your swing?"
"Yes! What?"
"Okay, did you not see me? I'm awesome. You suck. I hit the ball. You can't even hit air," he tells her.
"That's not very nice," she pouts, setting the tip of her bat on the plate. He rolls his eyes and starts walking towards her. "Is this the part where you give up? Tell me I'm being a brat?"
"Well, you are, but no," he says. He drops his glove onto the grass when he gets closer and she looks at him like he's nuts. She backs away when he reaches out for her. "Come here."
"What are you doing?" she asks. He puts his hand on her hip and grabs the bat with the other. He brings it up in front of her and nudges her arm so she'll grip the bat. "Noah."
"Showing you how to do this without looking like you don't know anything about anything or sports."
She turns to look at him over her shoulder, and he just grins at her and pushes at her shoulder with his so she turns back around. "Keep your hands close together. Don't choke it."
"I don't know what that means!" she whines.
"Don't hold too tight." She loosens her grip too much, so she's barely touching it. "Well, you have to hold it some."
He'd liken it to a hand job if he thought she'd ever given one.
She does it the way he shows her and then nods. "Okay. That feels good."
He's pressed up against her with his arms around her, and yeah, good is a pretty fair description. "Bend your knees a bit." She does, but she's still all stiff, so he pushes at the back of her leg with his knee. Her leg buckles a little bit and she squeals, but he curves his hand around her hip again and laughs. "Relax," he says. "It's about the hips."
"Hips?" she squeaks. "I thought you swung with your arms."
"Yeah, and you can't swing for shit." He laughs again when she actually giggles. "Follow through with your hips so you swing with your whole body."
He helps her move the bat a couple times, and the more she does it, the looser she gets, the better her swing. And yeah, he could probably let her go now and do this on her own, but he's kind of remembering that her body feels as nice as it looks, and he's just going to take advantage of that for a few more seconds. God, her ass is unreal. He can feel it against him every time she moves her hips, and when he slides his hand up her arm to her elbow, then down her side so he's holding both her hips over her jeans, he honestly thinks he's going to do something stupid. Like grind against her or kiss her or tell her fuck baseball and he'll teach her about sex instead.
"You wanna get out of here?" he asks abruptly.
He notices her breathing is a little laboured when she nods and says, "Yes."
They stop at Dairy Queen before going to her house, and he uses her laptop (seriously, does everything of hers have to be covered in flowers?) to Youtube videos of Ken Griffey Jr. because he has the best swing of any baseball player ever, in Puck's opinion. He also turns on a game on her bedroom television and she says she didn't even know their satellite package came with sports channels.
She pulls her hair from its ponytail and he watches her shake it with her fingers, comb them through as she makes a face. "What?" she asks.
"Nothing. You look like you're in pain."
"I typically don't wear my hair up," she explains. He figures that was just one of those girly moments he'll never really understand. "Who does Ken play for?"
He rolls his eyes. "You're on a first name basis now? Usually you call athletes by their last names."
She looks like she's about to stick her tongue out at him. "I can do whatever I want." Then she giggles and he can't help smiling as he shakes his head. Part of him wonders if they're, like, friends or something now.
"He's retired."
"Oh." She looks at the screen and watches the at-bat until the crowd on the television starts making a lot of noise and they both look over at it. There's a manager arguing with the umpire. Puck knows he's about to get tossed out. Rachel looks pretty interested in this. "I can read lips, you know. He's not saying very nice things."
Puck just laughs and closes her laptop, sets it at the end of her bed and leans back against her pillows. Her dads aren't home and the way she's sitting right now, he can see the very top of her purple panties peeking out from the back of her jeans. It's not like he ever thought Rachel was ugly or anything, but knowing he's alone with her right now makes her just about the hottest girl on the fucking planet. He hasn't been laid in far too long, since Santana's being the way she's being and he's been busy.
His phone rings, which makes him look away from Rachel's ass just in time for her to not catch him looking when she turns her head. He grabs his phone from his pocket and sees Santana's name there, and he hits the ignore button. Rachel makes this little scoffing sound and turns around again.
"What?" he asks, confused.
"Nothing."
"She's being stupid. I'm not signing up to listen to it," he explains. "She doesn't answer her fucking phone, so why should I answer mine?"
Rachel laughs again and shakes her head, turns back to the television and cheers for the wrong team when they hit the ball. It's cute, though, so he doesn't correct her. Besides, she doesn't know that the Twins are better than Kansas City.
When he leaves, she tells him she's got plans tomorrow and won't be able to practice, and he acts like it's really no big deal, but he's wondering who she has plans with and why she looked like she was blushing when she said that.
... ... ...
He hears through the grapevine that she's going on a date with one of the guys from Dalton. Kurt and Blaine set it up, and Rachel said yes. Finn tells Puck this. For a second, Puck thinks Finn's really, really jealous. He's only a little jealous, apparently, and then drops the thing all together.
Puck? He's feeling weird about it. For one thing, maybe it's wrong, but he kind of thought all the guys from Dalton were gay. Generalization, he knows, but whatever. He only knows two of them and they're, you know, dating, so he didn't really know any different.
And he's been hanging out with her every day and now she's off on a date with some other dude.
He and Finn destroy a super huge bag of Doritos and drink some Cokes, and then Puck heads over to Santana's. He's feeling like he needs some attention, okay? She asks him why the fuck he didn't answer his phone yesterday, and he tells her he lost it. It's a good thing he left it in his truck. It's not like needs her pulling it from his pocket (she would, too) and seeing that it's working just fine and he was just being a dick.
It's fast and dirty, because she likes it like that, and it doesn't really make him feel much better.
He's driving home after and wonders if Rachel even likes this other guy. Not that he cares or it's any of his business or anything.
... ... ...
He's not going to bring it up. If she wants to tell him about the date, she can. He's not going to ask her how it went and if she gave it up, because that'll make it look like he's interested, which he's not.
He can tell immediately that she's not herself. She's introverted and doesn't even say anything when he mentions what he did last night. He doesn't exactly mince words, and she just nods like she's only pretending to listen.
"What the fuck's with the zombie act?"
"Pardon? Nothing," she says quickly. "Can we practice hitting today?"
That's not what he had planned.
"No. What's wrong with you?" he asks seriously. She shakes her head, but he's got the ball in his hand and he's not starting this practice until she gives him some fucking information.
"Did you really sleep with Santana last night?" she asks abruptly. He's kind of weirded out by her calm tone as she asks, so he just shrugs his shoulders. "Was..."
He steps towards her. "What?"
"Nothing."
"Rachel, fucking talk." She looks up at him and he's actually a little worried. This is really some twilight zone bullshit right now. "What?"
"I had a date," she says. He acts like he had no idea, which is to say he just looks at her until she keeps talking. "It's not like I thought it was going to be a big romance or something, but..." She sighs and looks away. "Boys just don't want me."
He looks her up and down while she's not paying attention. "Sure, they do."
"Right," she scoffs, laughing humourlessly. Her eyes land on him again. "You're off having sex with Santana on a regular basis and I can't even get a boy to kiss me once."
He wants to laugh at her, but she'll probably never talk to him again and he's not prepared for that shit right now. "That's 'cause she's a slut and I have no standards." She laughs, but he can tell she doesn't really mean it. "You're hot, Rachel, you just gotta fuckin'...relax a little bit sometimes."
"I don't know how to do that," she admits. "I'm high strung by nature." She looks at him pensively. "And thank you for saying I'm hot."
He shrugs. "You are," he says again. He should stop that. "And yeah, you can. You're relaxed when we're fucking around out here."
She laughs. "That's because I'm awful and if I cared any more than this, I'd end up in tears."
He tosses the ball to her and she catches it pretty easily. "You won't be awful by the time I'm done with you," he promises.
She gives him this fucking winning smile and he really doesn't mind cheering her up.
... ... ...
He also doesn't mind knowing she didn't let some other dude get at her.
... ... ...
He's buying new shoes because he needs them and he has the money to do it, and he sees this girl's Indians hat on the shelf. He knows she hates wearing her hair up, and this hat has the hole in the back with the adjustable size thing, so she could just slip her hair through there and it'd be better for her or something.
He only buys it because it's on sale.
Not because he thinks she'll look fucking hot in it.
... ... ...
She's walking up his driveway wearing a black skirt and a white tank top.
Not exactly the right thing to wear for batting practice, but her legs look killer and her skin's all tanned.
"Nice uniform," he calls to her from the porch.
"I have someplace to be after this," she says. He doesn't really believe her.
"Here." He hands the hat to her and she gives him this stupid smile and he looks away.
"What is this?"
"Yours."
She looks really fucking hot when she pulls her hair up and slips it through the hole in the back, and it's not just because her tits are pressed up and together when she raises her arms. She pulls the hat down over her forehead and looks at him.
"Does it look okay?"
He wonders if she's as desperate now as she sounded the other day. 'Cause fuck, he kind of thinks he wants to fuck her. Like, right now; show her that yeah, guys want her. He wants her.
"Yeah," he says nonchalantly. He leads her around to the back of the house where he's got the batting tee set up, and she lets out a huff and puts her hands on her hips. "What?"
"Are you serious? Noah, I'm not four," she snaps. "I can hit a pitch."
He barks out a laugh and looks at her doubtfully. "Really? 'Cause I have yet to see that."
She crosses her arms and stands her ground, and there's something really fucking hot about it. "I'm not doing this. I'm not using that. It's humiliating," she insists.
"Yeah, I'm sure all these people really care right now," he says sarcastically, gesturing with his arms to his empty backyard. "Get the bat, move your ass, and try to hit the ball more than two feet."
"You know, you could stand to be nicer to me," she says.
"Don't hold your breath." She gets the bat, but she doesn't move to the tee. Instead, she tells him that he's going to pitch to her, and that's final. "Okay," he says with a grin. "I'll give you ten pitches. If you miss more than five, you have to use the tee."
"Fine," she says smugly, like she's won some kind of argument.
It's kind of cute, how she thinks she's good enough to hit at least five pitches when she can barely even remember how to hold the bat.
He goes easy on her. He doesn't want her to start crying or some shit, so he lobs a couple balls at her and she swings for the fences and hits nothing but a whole lot of air. Her form is completely shit again, even if she is bending her knees, and he knows that even if she does hit one of these, it's not like it's going far.
The bat grazes pitch #4, but nothing happens after that, and she asks if it counts, so he says yes just to make her happy. (Apparently he cares about shit like that.) Pitch #5, she misses completely, and she's pissed at herself and he's smiling.
"Miss this one and you lose."
"Shut up, Noah, I know."
Fuck, she's kind of super hot when she's snapping at him like that.
She swings, hits nothing, and drops the bat onto the ground, groans so loudly in frustration that it almost freaks him out, and then looks at him like she's waiting for him to say something shitty. Well damn, he knows how pissed she is right now and he doesn't want to poke the bear.
"Pick it up," he says as he walks towards her.
He wonders if she means to bend down right in front of him. He almost sees her panties, but her skirt won't ride up that high. Shame, too, 'cause, you know, panties.
They go through the batting stance like they did the other day, only this time he touches her less and she seems to retain more. Maybe she's less distracted or something. She swings at the ball on the tee and hits the ball further than a foot, so he deems that a success. He gives her a few tips and she starts hitting the ball further and further. She gets one all the way to the fence at the edge of his yard, about 30 feet away, and she lets out this squeal and jumps up.
Panties. Purple ones that cover her ass nicely, but not too much.
She doesn't even seem to notice, and when she turns around to look at him, she can't tell he was just checking her out or that he's thinking of how she'd look on his bed (or the grass; he's not picky) as he pulled those panties down off her hips.
"Nice," he says. He doesn't know what he's talking about, really, but it works no matter what.
"That was perfect and you know it," she says, hand on hip.
He just smiles and looks at the inside of her thigh, 'cause she's got her weight on one leg and the other looks all fucking hot there.
"Yeah. Perfect."
She still doesn't know when a dude's checking her out. If he wanted her to know, he'd give her lessons in that, too.
He walks her home after, because he's got nothing better to do and he wants to.
She's laughing with him and totally fucking flirting (whether she realizes it or not) and pushing at his arm when he makes fun of her or laughs at her.
Apparently that other thing she had to do after their practice was nothing, because he walks her to her door and she says she's got the rest of the day free. She doesn't realize what she's said or anything, and she's just kind of a huge liar.
He smirks to himself after she closes the door, 'cause yeah, she wore a skirt for a reason, and he wonders if she picked out those panties just for him, too.
... ... ...
Two can play this little game.
It's hot as hell, so when he meets her at the diamond after his Chem class, he pulls his shirt off and doesn't let on that he can see her checking him out. She totally is and he totally can.
She may not want him, really, and she still seems to think she's not nearly as fuckable as she is, but whatever. He likes the idea of corrupting the hell out of her, even if she has no idea he wants to.
She's selfish. She's a brat who cares more about herself than anyone else she knows, and he's aware of that. They're the same that way, and it's probably one of the reasons their relationship crashed. That, and a whole lot of other things.
She's wearing these tight as hell little shorts right now, and a top that might as well be painted on. He's not complaining. He wonders what they were playing in gym today.
"I'm really tired," she tells him right away. "We ran long distance today."
"You win?" he asks. It probably wasn't really a race, but if he knows anything about her at all, he knows she treated it like one. She grins slowly and he knows she's got better stamina than the overweight girls in her class. (But hey, bless 'em for being active, right?) "Good."
"Can we do something easy?" she asks sweetly. He's kind of distracted by the outline of her tits in that shirt, and she seems pretty distracted by the fact that he's not wearing one at all. "Maybe we could just..."
"What?"
She shrugs her shoulder, and he notices the sweat on her skin. "The Indians are playing this afternoon, aren't they?"
So that's how they end up walking to his house. He's got his shirt tucked into the back of his shorts and she pulls her hair up into a messy knot thing, and he puts his hand around her waist when she's about to step in a wad of gum. He pulls her against him and her breath hitches. It's pretty fucked up that it takes him a minute to let go, and when he does, she runs her hand over her side, and he doesn't really know what that means.
He gets them ice cream from the freezer at his place and points the fan right at them as they sit on the couch. He explains a few things to her, like the ground rule double and that your first two fouls are strikes. She asks him a couple things that make him roll his eyes, like why the second baseman for Toronto has his pants tucked into his socks, and why they eat so many sunflower seeds.
She's such a girl. He knows she is, obviously, because he's been sneaking looks down her shirt all day and the way she'd licked her spoon earlier totally gave him a semi, but damn, he wishes she knew more about sports.
It's still super hot that she's so serious about learning.
She blushes when he tells her that, and then she mentions something about having to be someplace to do whatever, and he checks out her ass as she bends over to tie her shoes.
... ... ...
She comes to his next baseball game. She's alone in the stands with her hands tucked under her thighs and these little denim shorts on. She smiles at him when he looks her way, and he's pretty shocked she doesn't, like, wave and yell his name or something. She used to do that the first time she and Finn dated, and shit was embarrassing for everyone.
He sees her cheering when he makes a tough catch and throws out the guy running to first. He feels pretty smug about it. She's one of about 20 people who came to watch the game, and she's the only one this into it.
After the win, his teammates are talking about going out and finding some beers, which he's all for. Rachel just waves subtly, grabs her keys from her purse and walks away from the field with a smile on her face.
And he kind of thinks it sucked, today, to not be able to hang out with her.
... ... ...
"Why'd you come?" he asks her as they play catch. She actually manages to catch more balls than she drops, so he figures that's progress.
She shrugs her shoulder and tosses a ball back to him. Yeah, her arm could use some work. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Rachel," he laughs.
"I had nothing better to do," she admits kind of quietly. "And I wanted to."
He grins, tells her to stop holding the ball so hard, and has her throwing a little harder by the time they leave so he can drive her home.
...Part II...