it's about taking a fall, PQ, one-shot
Title: it's about taking a fall
Author: une_fille
Pairing: Puck/Quinn
Word count: ~1300
Rating: PG
Summary: They live in a bubble that neither of them is ready to burst. Puck and Quinn and the space between.
A/N: Title from the Elliot Smith song "Miss Misery" Props to of_hearts for the beta.
---
And I try to be but you know me
I come back when you want me to
Do you miss me, Miss Misery
Like you say you do?
---
They don’t go to the diner after school anymore. They drive right by it, his truck sputtering down Main Street as the laughter of cheerleaders and jocks floats in the air and they try not to buckle under the weight of it all. When they get home she always asks if he wants to go back and he always says no. She doesn’t believe him (but then again, she never does) so he rolls his eyes at her sexy snarl and goes back to folding the frayed edges of his sweatshirt up her thin wrist.
It’s all that fits her these days.
---
They decide on an open-adoption. Huddled together in his too-small bed with the television downstairs blaring some infomercial and the crash of god knows what coming from Sarah’s room piercing through the din, she explains the whole process, start to finish, repeating every word Ms. Pillsbury had told her that afternoon. He wants to stop her, to cut in and tell her that yeah, he’d been there, too when she’d dragged him to visit the guidance counselor but as she parrots the speech to a spot over his shoulder, he can’t get the words out.
He doesn’t know if she’s trying to convince him or herself.
When she meets his eyes, all he can do to mutter a broken, “okay, okay.” He reaches over and tracks the tear going down the side of her face with his thumb.
They fall asleep with their foreheads touching and random light thumping against his stomach. He dreams in yellows, whites and reds; her face outlined in abstract shapes of longing.
(It’s a dream he’s had countless times before, but waking up to its soft, steady breath against his arm is always a revelation.)
---
They both know what shit-awful parents they’d make, but they’re too selfish to cut ties altogether. Still, the process Quinn engrained in their memories falters when they realize they need to pick someone to take her away from them.
It's not long before they almost give up searching altogether.
(He doesn’t know if it's that everyone’s worse than them or everyone’s better; all he knows is it’s not right.)
---
Q was up all Sunday night with heartburn and now he’s facing the world of Monday morning half-dead. When he ambles into the locker room behind a buzzing Finn, he tries to follow the conversation and fails miserably.
Finn blathers on about dinner with Rachel’s fathers - a first for them - and Puck does what he can to nod at the right parts and hmmm along with the story. Their friendship hangs by a thread these days; he’s not going to screw it up again.
“- their friends Mark and Daniel got turned down again at some agency, sixth time in a row, and I swear dude, one of them turned purple as he was telling us.”
“Hmmmm.”
“I guess they must really want that baby.”
And the world snaps back into focus.
This isn’t something particularly newsworthy to him. It seems like everyone wants a baby. He has manila folders stuffed to the brim with pictures of pathetic jungle gyms dying to be used and endless sheets of paper boasting annual incomes he can’t even fathom piling up high against his guitar stand, each sealed with an intense desperation that he and Q can feel when they rip open the next one.
Everyone wants a baby.
Still, as he sits in his English class the next day, there in body if not in spirit, all that runs through his mind is that he wants to do something worthwhile with his life, even if it means giving her up.
When he corners Berry on her way to the cafeteria and she squeaks in alarm, he swallows the feral grin fighting its way onto his face and tells her they need to talk.
---
He thinks this will be a hard sell. Q may be tarnished forever in the eyes of her Lord but she still keeps a leather-bound Bible on the nightstand.
He tells her they’re going on a date that night and for a second he sees the fear flash across her face. Parading around school in nature’s fatsuit may be one thing but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to go to the diner and face their friends. She’s tired of being that girl around them; he’s the only who lets her be Quinn these days.
He stands there, twirling his keys in his hands with a half-grin on his face until she huffs and turns her head to hide the smile he saw coming a mile away.
They stop at the bodega and he kisses her behind the ice machine, his thumb rubbing the swell of her stomach, until the clerk clucks his tongue and rings up their pile of junk food. The drive to the park is made in the sticky, sweet silence of the spring night. Puck’s elbow rests in the open window of the truck and Quinn’s hand makes waves in the rushing air while the other rests on his on the shift.
He thinks of ways to bring it up as she gallops ahead of him to perch herself carefully on a low-hanging swing. He comes up behind her, his nose buried in her hair and he tells her.
“Do they have a backyard?”
“What?”
“A backyard. Every kid should have a backyard,” her voice is kind of wistful, mouth paused around a strawberry marshmallow thoughtfully. He wants to tell her he didn’t - doesn’t - have much of a backyard but he’s scared she just might use that as proof of her argument.
“So you’re like, okay with, you know-” he gestures, arms flailing, “-the homo thing?”
“The Lord says judge not lest ye be judged.” He snorts and falls to the sand, the slow creak of the swing the only noise in the air - aside from her indignant huff.
“Think she’d turn out like Berry?”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he mutters, bouncing up and dusting himself off as he goes to stand behind her again, gently prodding her back to keep her swaying lightly. “Don’t joke about that shit.”
They fall into a peaceful lull that lasts only minutes before Puck clears his throat. “I went to see Ms. P., to ask her some questions about you and the baby.”
She leans her head back until she’s starting up into his face and smiles. “Oh yeah? What did you learn?”
“Six weeks.”
“What? What are you-” but then her eyes fall to his smirk and her face colors. “Great, Puck, that’s just lovely,” she snipes, shrugging his hands off her shoulders. “As if.”
He falls back again, but this time he mimes a knife being stabbed into his heart. He grins as she chuckles at his theatrics and grunts happily when he hits the ground and the air is knocked out his lungs.
The sound of her shuffling through the sand to stand by his prone body turns gives him a lopsided grin. He looks up at her through heavy-lidded eyes, standing imposingly over him with one hand on her hip and the other fiddling violently with the cross dangling from around her neck. The moon glows behind her, outlining her bump with an airy sheen that burns to the back of his eyes.
It’s Quinn who calls Rachel that night to get the number they need as he slips his t-shirt off and spreads out a clean baseball shirt of his for her on the bed.
---
When they finally crawl into bed that night, it’s her hand creeping along the space between them and he wants to laugh but her hot breath on his jaw stops him.
---
Author: une_fille
Pairing: Puck/Quinn
Word count: ~1300
Rating: PG
Summary: They live in a bubble that neither of them is ready to burst. Puck and Quinn and the space between.
A/N: Title from the Elliot Smith song "Miss Misery" Props to of_hearts for the beta.
---
And I try to be but you know me
I come back when you want me to
Do you miss me, Miss Misery
Like you say you do?
---
They don’t go to the diner after school anymore. They drive right by it, his truck sputtering down Main Street as the laughter of cheerleaders and jocks floats in the air and they try not to buckle under the weight of it all. When they get home she always asks if he wants to go back and he always says no. She doesn’t believe him (but then again, she never does) so he rolls his eyes at her sexy snarl and goes back to folding the frayed edges of his sweatshirt up her thin wrist.
It’s all that fits her these days.
---
They decide on an open-adoption. Huddled together in his too-small bed with the television downstairs blaring some infomercial and the crash of god knows what coming from Sarah’s room piercing through the din, she explains the whole process, start to finish, repeating every word Ms. Pillsbury had told her that afternoon. He wants to stop her, to cut in and tell her that yeah, he’d been there, too when she’d dragged him to visit the guidance counselor but as she parrots the speech to a spot over his shoulder, he can’t get the words out.
He doesn’t know if she’s trying to convince him or herself.
When she meets his eyes, all he can do to mutter a broken, “okay, okay.” He reaches over and tracks the tear going down the side of her face with his thumb.
They fall asleep with their foreheads touching and random light thumping against his stomach. He dreams in yellows, whites and reds; her face outlined in abstract shapes of longing.
(It’s a dream he’s had countless times before, but waking up to its soft, steady breath against his arm is always a revelation.)
---
They both know what shit-awful parents they’d make, but they’re too selfish to cut ties altogether. Still, the process Quinn engrained in their memories falters when they realize they need to pick someone to take her away from them.
It's not long before they almost give up searching altogether.
(He doesn’t know if it's that everyone’s worse than them or everyone’s better; all he knows is it’s not right.)
---
Q was up all Sunday night with heartburn and now he’s facing the world of Monday morning half-dead. When he ambles into the locker room behind a buzzing Finn, he tries to follow the conversation and fails miserably.
Finn blathers on about dinner with Rachel’s fathers - a first for them - and Puck does what he can to nod at the right parts and hmmm along with the story. Their friendship hangs by a thread these days; he’s not going to screw it up again.
“- their friends Mark and Daniel got turned down again at some agency, sixth time in a row, and I swear dude, one of them turned purple as he was telling us.”
“Hmmmm.”
“I guess they must really want that baby.”
And the world snaps back into focus.
This isn’t something particularly newsworthy to him. It seems like everyone wants a baby. He has manila folders stuffed to the brim with pictures of pathetic jungle gyms dying to be used and endless sheets of paper boasting annual incomes he can’t even fathom piling up high against his guitar stand, each sealed with an intense desperation that he and Q can feel when they rip open the next one.
Everyone wants a baby.
Still, as he sits in his English class the next day, there in body if not in spirit, all that runs through his mind is that he wants to do something worthwhile with his life, even if it means giving her up.
When he corners Berry on her way to the cafeteria and she squeaks in alarm, he swallows the feral grin fighting its way onto his face and tells her they need to talk.
---
He thinks this will be a hard sell. Q may be tarnished forever in the eyes of her Lord but she still keeps a leather-bound Bible on the nightstand.
He tells her they’re going on a date that night and for a second he sees the fear flash across her face. Parading around school in nature’s fatsuit may be one thing but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to go to the diner and face their friends. She’s tired of being that girl around them; he’s the only who lets her be Quinn these days.
He stands there, twirling his keys in his hands with a half-grin on his face until she huffs and turns her head to hide the smile he saw coming a mile away.
They stop at the bodega and he kisses her behind the ice machine, his thumb rubbing the swell of her stomach, until the clerk clucks his tongue and rings up their pile of junk food. The drive to the park is made in the sticky, sweet silence of the spring night. Puck’s elbow rests in the open window of the truck and Quinn’s hand makes waves in the rushing air while the other rests on his on the shift.
He thinks of ways to bring it up as she gallops ahead of him to perch herself carefully on a low-hanging swing. He comes up behind her, his nose buried in her hair and he tells her.
“Do they have a backyard?”
“What?”
“A backyard. Every kid should have a backyard,” her voice is kind of wistful, mouth paused around a strawberry marshmallow thoughtfully. He wants to tell her he didn’t - doesn’t - have much of a backyard but he’s scared she just might use that as proof of her argument.
“So you’re like, okay with, you know-” he gestures, arms flailing, “-the homo thing?”
“The Lord says judge not lest ye be judged.” He snorts and falls to the sand, the slow creak of the swing the only noise in the air - aside from her indignant huff.
“Think she’d turn out like Berry?”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he mutters, bouncing up and dusting himself off as he goes to stand behind her again, gently prodding her back to keep her swaying lightly. “Don’t joke about that shit.”
They fall into a peaceful lull that lasts only minutes before Puck clears his throat. “I went to see Ms. P., to ask her some questions about you and the baby.”
She leans her head back until she’s starting up into his face and smiles. “Oh yeah? What did you learn?”
“Six weeks.”
“What? What are you-” but then her eyes fall to his smirk and her face colors. “Great, Puck, that’s just lovely,” she snipes, shrugging his hands off her shoulders. “As if.”
He falls back again, but this time he mimes a knife being stabbed into his heart. He grins as she chuckles at his theatrics and grunts happily when he hits the ground and the air is knocked out his lungs.
The sound of her shuffling through the sand to stand by his prone body turns gives him a lopsided grin. He looks up at her through heavy-lidded eyes, standing imposingly over him with one hand on her hip and the other fiddling violently with the cross dangling from around her neck. The moon glows behind her, outlining her bump with an airy sheen that burns to the back of his eyes.
It’s Quinn who calls Rachel that night to get the number they need as he slips his t-shirt off and spreads out a clean baseball shirt of his for her on the bed.
---
When they finally crawl into bed that night, it’s her hand creeping along the space between them and he wants to laugh but her hot breath on his jaw stops him.
---