That the Moon Elbowed the Stars 5/17
Title: That the Moon Elbowed the Stars
Chapter: 5/17
Rating: R
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Word Count: 6,950
Summary: And maybe it's an awful thing to think, but he wonders what's worse for her, losing New York or losing her dad.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Rachel's last final of the semester happens to fall on her birthday, but given that she doesn't feel particularly festive, she isn't too bothered. She's finished with her exam by noon and is on the road to Lima before two, sipping a soy gingerbread latte from Starbucks and listening to a playlist of her favorite Christmas songs while she drives.
Winter break is a relief. Rachel has always liked school, but this is perhaps the first time in her life when she isn't pursuing the arts as part of her academics. All of her classes this semester were straightforward gen eds, and frankly, it was boring. But she refuses to declare her major here at OSU; she's approaching it more like one would approach a community college, as a chance to get the basics out of the way before getting into the classes that really matter, focusing in on the thing that you really want to do.
She'll do what she wants to do when she gets to New York.
And it's stressful, going back and forth, feeling torn between two places. She goes home every weekend now, unwilling to give up any of her time with her daddy while she still has it. She barely has time for the friends she has, let alone the time to meet new people at school the way she knows she's supposed to be. She still has lunch with Noah once a week, and she and Santana watch House every Monday night. (Even if it is a torture of sorts, watching a medical drama, Hugh Laurie is an exceptional actor, and Santana started watching when Olivia Wilde joined the cast.) But she can't even remember the last time she saw Finn, he's so caught up with football practices and such, though he doesn't yet play in games, and she certainly isn't befriending anyone new.
Maybe that's for the better though. Why put the effort into building new friendships in Ohio when she's only going to be here for a little longer? What's the sense in subjecting herself to even more goodbyes when the time comes?
Rock Hudson is sitting in the front hall when Rachel lets herself into the house, his tail curled around his feet while he watches her with enormous green eyes. He's starting to lose some of his kittenish looks, which she finds more sad than she expected. There's something inexplicably adorable about a kitten, and she hates to see him lose it.
She really loves this cat, the way that he spends most of his time trailing Daddy through the house, but is in the habit of sleeping next to her if she's doing reading on her bed in the afternoon or early evening. She's never heard a cat purr louder than Rock, a deep, soothing sound that's nearly constant when he's asleep. She also likes the idea, however absurd, that Rock is watching out for her fathers, keeping an eye on him in his cat way.
She's sitting at the table with her fathers after dinner, eating mango sorbet and discussing the particulars (and ridiculousness) of Freud's stages of psycho-sexual development when the doorbell rings. Dad goes to answer it, and reappears a moment later with Santana. "You're coming with me," she girl announces, sliding into the open seat a the table. She snags Rachel's spoon from her hand and takes a little bite of sorbet.
"Pardon me?"
Santana looks at her pointedly. "It's your birthday, and we're going to celebrate."
Rachel glances at her daddy. "But--"
"Go," he interrupts with a smile. "Have fun. Be safe," he adds, almost like an afterthought. Rachel is very open with her parents, and while she isn't prone to crazy nights out, they're aware that she drinks on occasion, usually with Santana and/or Noah. She appreciates that she doesn't have to lie to them.
"Fine," she says, holding up her hands.
They end up at a little dive bar just outside the city limits, and while Rachel has her fake ID, Santana's cleavage is apparently all the man behind the bar needs to see to be convinced to serve them a pitcher of margaritas. And another.
And another.
The more tequila they drink, the sillier their conversation gets. Rachel always finds herself wishing that she and Santana had gotten over their mutual animosity sooner than they did, that they could have had this sort of relationship from the beginning of their time together in glee club rather than only coming to a sort of tacit agreement to leave one another alone sometime in the middle of senior year. Of course, they've both grown enormously since then, and maybe it's that growth that has allowed them to become such friends.
Adding alcohol certainly doesn't hurt.
It's all silliness, the conversations they're having, and that's just fine with Rachel. She's more than content to listen to Santana's stories about her weekends out, her anecdotes about the men (and women) she's bedded since school started. Rachel's never really had any girlfriends, so talking to Santana like this is still a wonderful novelty, even if it's all sort of sitting on the surface.
It's when Santana suggests getting pitcher number four that Rachel offers the alternative of calling someone to come and take them home so they don't spend their entire Saturday throwing up and feeling terrible. Rachel knows her own tolerance, and if she's being completely honest, she's already had more to drink than she should have. Still, she has enough self-preservational instincts to decline any more tequila.
Noah is the one who comes to get them, sauntering into the bar like he's been here a hundred times (possibly he has) and taking a seat next to Rachel. "'S'up, lushes?"
Santana rolls her eyes. "Obviously, drinking margaritas for Rachel's birthday is what's up."
"Hey, that's right. Happy birthday," Puck says, nudging Rachel with his elbow. "You're like, twenty-five now, right?"
Rachel just rolls her eyes, tapping a button on her phone to illuminate the screen. "Technically, it isn't my birthday any more," she points out when she sees that it's after midnight.
"Fuck that," Santana interjects. "It's your birthday until you go to sleep. It's like a rule."
Rachel blinks. "If you say so."
Rachel ends up riding bitch in Puck's truck because Santana has always refused to do it, even when they were dating, and 'just because it's her birthday doesn't mean that shit changes.' Whatever. Santana's house is closer to the bar than Rachel's, so he drops her off first, and Rachel stays there in the middle seat even after Santana's gone.
"Oh, my gosh," she says suddenly, looking up at him with huge eyes. "I can't go home."
"Because you're drunk?"
"No. Well, yes, but because chemo has made Daddy a really light sleeper. I can't wake him up because I decided to go drinking with Santana."
It didn't even occur to her before now, which makes her feel like a terrible daughter, but in her own defense, she doesn't generally go out at all when she's home for the weekends. The whole point of being at home is to spend time with her fathers, which she would decidedly not be doing if she ran out with whoever every time she was home. (And really, who? Brittany and her friends who are still in high school? That isn't very likely.)
"I think you just want to sleep all up next to this," Noah says cockily. Rachel pretends her cheeks don't warm a little at the thought.
"Your mother won't mind, will she?" She realizes that she's just invited herself to his house, but he doesn't seem too upset by it, so she doesn't dwell. Just like she isn't dwelling on the idea of sleeping beside him again. Besides, she isn't sure that either of those times - crying herself to exhaustion and passing out drunk - really count as sleeping at all.
"Nah. She'll go on one of her 'you should marry that Rachel Berry' jags, but whatever." He shrugs his shoulders as he rolls through a stop sigh. "I can handle it."
"You should marry Rachel Berry?" she repeats, her eyebrows raised as she turns to look at him. Her eyes are sort of glassy with booze under the street lights, and her hair's kind of a mess from the wind outside and, you know, being drunk.
He just shrugs his shoulders again, a little grin on his lips when he glances over at her.
She busies herself with sending Dad a text message while Noah drives, letting her parents know that she's safe and well for the evening and will see them tomorrow, and ignoring the fact that she can feel herself blushing as Noah drives through Lima's deserted streets.
He tells her to go on upstairs when he unlocks the front door of his house, and she does as he says, not even bothering to pull her coat off before going up to his room and pushing the door most the way closed behind her. Noah's been home for a day longer than she has, she knows, and where there's still a packed bag and a few odds and ends from her apartment that she wanted in Lima sitting around her own bedroom, his things have all been put away. The room is tidy, like it was at Thanksgiving, tidier than it was all summer; it's a sign that no one really lives here, and she thinks that it's the sort of room that looks like it's meant to have clutter. The tidiness is strange.
She's shrugging out of her red wool coat when he comes in carrying two bottles of water and a box of Wheat Thins. "Are you going to be hungover tomorrow?" he asks, waiting until she's draped her coat over the back of his desk chair to hand her a bottle of water. Puck doesn't really care if she is, but he likes to have a little warning.
She shakes her head, but it takes her three tries to get the lid screwed off the water bottle, which leads him to believe she isn't really a reliable judge of her own drunkenness. "Can I borrow something to sleep in?" she asks in this quiet little voice.
"Yeah."
She watches him open a dresser drawer and pull out a gray McKinley tee shirt everyone she knows from high school has - Rachel has one herself, albeit in a smaller size. He hands it to her, then his eyes flick quickly down her body and back to her eyes.
"Lemme find you a pair of shorts or something." He knows there are a pair or two of the tiny cotton ones Santana used to wear for cheerleading practice that somehow wound up in his room permanently. (He wonders, now, what the fuck she wore home if she left her shorts at his.)
"It's fine," she says, shaking her head when he looks like he's going to move again. "The shirt is long enough to cover everything."
She turns to face the wall when she pulls her sweater up over her head, and she isn't ashamed to admit that it's because she's shy at the idea of being in any state of undress in front of Noah. She waits until she's wearing his tee shirt, which falls to the middle of her thighs, to shimmy out of her jeans, tossing them over the back of his desk chair with her coat. He's unbuckling his belt when she turns around, his tee shirt already discarded. "Which side is yours?" she asks, keeping her eyes on his face as he pushes his jeans down around his feet.
Her cheeks are a little pink when he nods at the right side of the bed, where his alarm clock sits. He waits until she's slipped beneath the covers on the to flick off the light, crossing the dark room slowly so he can get in beside her. She's already curled up on her side with her back to him, and once his eyes adjust to the dimness, he can see her hair fanned out over the pillow. "Night, Rach."
"Good night, Noah." She can feel how warm he is behind her, and she resists the urge to roll over and curl into his side. It's been ages since she fell asleep all wrapped up in someone's arms, and she misses it. She's always tried to resist being the needy drunk though, tries not to cling to the people around her even when she feels compelled. Noah was nice enough to pick them up from the bar and to let her stay in his bed. She isn't going to take advantage of his hospitality any more be pressing herself up against him.
She jumps when he says her name, startled even though his voice is low and sleepy. "Happy birthday."
She blinks into the darkness around her. "Thanks."
It doesn't feel so happy. She's spent the entire day thinking about the fact that this is the last birthday she'll ever have with her daddy alive. It's a thought that follows her constantly, with everything she does, and it makes it difficult to feel festive about anything.
*
Puck's pretty glad to be get back to school after winter break. Yeah, having his own room at home and having all that time to fuck around is awesome, but he's also not used to having to check in with anyone when he wants to stay out, not used to trying to watch his mouth because his sister's around and it pisses his mom off when he swears. (Which is fucking ridiculous, given that Abby's been known to drop the occasional curse herself. She's twelve. It's not like she's never heard someone swear.)
Sam is kind of cramping Puck's style though. See, the guy has decided that he's going to try to become a resident adviser next year. He spouts off a bunch of bullshit (not really) about how being an RA will get his room and board paid for, and he'll get vouchers for the bookstore, not to mention how good it's going to look on resumes and blah, blah, blah. It sounds like a huge fucking headache. Puck's actually a considerate guy, so he makes a point of getting rid of the alcohol he had squirreled away in the back of his wardrobe and not deliberately pissing off their RA just in case the dude somehow has pull over whether or not Sam gets hired.
That means that he can't pregame in the dorms any more, and since Rachel's apartment is his booze storage, he ends up over there a lot more than he did last semester. Some of that is on weekends when she's back in Lima and he has to let himself in with the spare key he has, but it's not like he's hanging out in her place when she isn't home. That would just be weird. So he goes in, gets what he needs, and leaves. She knows he does it though, because she leaves him little notes in her neat print, pink post-its stuck to the front of the bottles in the cabinet above her fridge (the one he knows she has to stand on a chair to reach) reminding him to be careful or suggesting that he try mixing the vodka with the cranberry-pomegranate juice she has in her fridge. (It'll be delicious!)
And then there's the girl from the computer lab, Mia.
She waits until February to call him, and he's actually forgotten about her. Then, since it's two weeks before Valentine's Day, he's half-scared to call her back. Chicks trap you with that shit, and it somehow turns into a thing when it's just a thing, and Puck isn't really interested in anything but getting his dick wet. Okay, maybe that's a little extreme, but he definitely isn't interested in winding up being somebody's boyfriend just because he starts hanging out with her a week before Valentine's Day.
But it turns out that Mia's actually pretty fucking cool.
They start with just texting, which is probably pretty stupid given that they live less than a hundred yards from each other, but whatever. She comes to dinner with him and Sam sometimes, and Santana doesn't think Mia's a complete bitch when she meets her. (Not that that means anything; she half-hated Quinn and definitely thought she was a bitch, but they were still friends.) Mia doesn't really expect anything of Puck other than doing what he says he's going to do, which makes sense. She isn't playing games with him, and it kind of feels like it did when he thought he was in love with Lauren or whatever back in high school, when he really wanted to get to know her and actually be something together.
Except Mia's smoking hot and he wants to get her naked like, yesterday. So.
She's a creative writing major, and she takes school really seriously, but Puck convinces her to go out with him on a Thursday night before midterms, citing the fact that she just turned in her zine for her poetry class and can take one weeknight away to have fun and the bottle of Seagram's he bought after she told him that she liked gin.
The house they're going to is just a few blocks off campus, and Rachel's place is on the way, so he can pick up the gin without feeling like an ass for bringing booze into the guys' room.
Rachel is sitting on her couch in a pair of pink plaid lounge pants and a mismatched OSU sweatshirt of Santana's, reading an analysis of the myth of Sisyphus and watching an old Scrubs rerun when Noah knocks on the door. He sent her a text to let her know he was coming, so she calls out a 'come in' and turns the page in her book.
She's a little surprised when he walks in with a tall, gorgeous redhead.
Rachel is immediately uncomfortable, frumpy and ugly in her ill-fitting sweatshirt and glorified pajama pants, sitting in the same room as this girl with knee-high leather boots and perfectly drawn cat's eye liner. "Hi," she says, standing and setting her book on the coffee table. She's nothing if not well-mannered, so she smiles at the girl. "I'm Rachel."
"Mia." Rachel watches a full body shiver go through the girl. It's freezing outside. "It's nice to meet you."
"Gin," Noah interjects, his hands still shoved in his pockets.
Rachel rolls her eyes a little, and her hand comes up to touch the ends of her hair when she starts towards the kitchen. "Would you like some tea?" she offers, ignoring Puck and looking over her shoulder at Mia. He really hopes she says no, because he really wants to get to this party.
(He's sort of dying to know what Mia's like when she drunks, if he's being honest. But he does know better than to say that shit out loud.)
"No, thanks," Mia says, and Puck does a little internal fist pump. "I'm sorry we interrupted your reading."
Rachel waves her hand, grabbing the yellow tea kettle from where it sits on the stove top while Noah reaches into the cabinet over the fridge for his liquor. "It's no problem. I'm used to Puck's intrusions."
He looks over at her, standing at the sink filling the kettle. It's weird to hear his nickname come out of her mouth. Not unheard of, but a little weird. She doesn't even acknowledge that he's looking at her, just turns off the faucet and sets her kettle on a burner, turning a knob to heat the electric coil. "Are you sure you don't want to come out with us?" he asks her.
She leans against the counter, tucks her hands in the pocket of her sweatshirt, and looks at him. "No, thank you. I have reading to finish for class tomorrow."
Maybe it makes him an ass, especially since she's his friend, but he's relieved she said no. "All right. We'll get out of your way."
She follows them to the door so she can lock it behind them, telling Mia that it was nice to meet her and reminding Noah to call if he needs a ride. And once she's alone again, she tries to figure out exactly why she's feeling this tightness in her stomach that she recognizes as jealousy.
She knows that she's missing out on this whole college experience thing. There's an enormous part of her that wants everything that Noah and Sam and Santana and even Finn get to have. She wants to flirt with the boy in her economics class who's been watching her not-so-discreetly from day one, wants to indulge in a semi-ilicit affair, wants to go out drinking on a Thursday night because she doesn't have to worry about being able to drive back to Lima the next afternoon.
She wants to be able to go out with Noah right now, to drink too much gin and have fun without feeling guilty for forgetting for just five minutes about her father and how miserable he's been for the last month.
The tea kettle whistling in the kitchen pulls her out of her thoughts, forcing her, for just two minutes, to focus on the motions of preparing a cup of herbal tea for herself. It doesn't do any good to think about any of this, what she's missing out on and what could have been if her father hadn't gotten sick and she'd been able to go to New York like she'd always planned.
It's a train of thought she's ridden plenty of times since last May, since the day when she called her perfect school in her perfect city and told them that she wasn't coming. It never fails to make her feel guilty and selfish and sad. She tries not to let herself dwell in that space; it's too easy to get sucked in and spend days and days feeling terrible, but sometimes she just can't help it.
It keeps her up late, these thoughts, and the sound of her alarm the next morning seems like the worst thing ever in the moment. She finds it incredibly difficult to focus in her astronomy lecture, and instead of paying attention to what her professor is saying about Jupiter's moons, she's zoning out completely and absently drawing little constellations of stars in the margins of her notebook. (Later, when she looks back, she'll see that she actually was drawing constellations, proper constellations.) The professor dismisses the class a few minutes early, and for all of the material that she paid attention to (basically none), Rachel might as well have driven back to Lima last night instead of waiting until after class.
The house is quiet when she finally gets back to Lima. Dad is still at work, and Rachel finds Daddy napping with Rock in his bedroom after she's dumped her things.
She ends up crawling in bed beside him, not even pretending any more than the sight of his nearly gray skin and the gauntness of his features doesn't make her want to cry. His breathing is shallow, even when he's asleep, but she lays there and watches the way his chest rises and falls with each breath. It's comforting that he's still breathing, and the rhythm of that combined with the sound of a purring cat lulls her to sleep.
Diane Sawyer's voice is what wakes her, talking about the latest Republican versus Democrat nonsense in Washington, and Rachel opens her eyes to see Daddy propped up against a mound of pillows. Rock's head is resting on his thigh while he scratches the space between the cat's ears. "There's sleeping beauty," he says, glancing down at his daughter.
She pushes herself up against the pillows so she's a little less horizontal. "How are you feeling?"
He just shakes his head, glancing skyward in a gesture approaching an eye roll.
She hates seeing him like this, obviously in pain. Daddy has always been the strong one in the family, literally and figuratively, and seeing him thin and weak and exhausted is more than a little difficult. But it's not something they talk about as a family, not explicitly. It isn't quite denial, even if it may look that way to someone on the outside. It's just that they all three know the score, and they don't need to discuss it endlessly, to bring up what's right in front of them. He's no longer on chemo, and all of the medications he's taking are meant to ease pain and discomfort, like his persistent nausea.
At this point, Daddy is just waiting to die.
He's refused to go to the hospital, despite the suggestions of his oncologist and the hospice nurse who comes periodically. "I know that as soon as I go to the hospital, I'm going to die," he's said. "I'm not going until I have to."
And as hard as it is to see him like this, she understands and respects his position, so she doesn't bring it up. And every time her phone rings, dread washes over her, because she just knows that this is the call telling her that he's been taken to the hospital.
They lay together watching the news and discussing politics until Dad comes home with dinner, which they all eat together on trays in her fathers' big bed.
*
Puck's phone vibrating on his desk is what wakes him, but he's taking a nap with Mia while Sam's in his two-hour history lecture, so he ignores it. It's probably his mom wanting to check in, or maybe Finn wanting to make plans for the weekend; nothing that can't wait until later when he's not dozing with a hot ass redhead in his bed.
But then it starts vibrating again immediately after it stops, which is like the universal answer your fucking phone signal, so he pulls away from Mia, carefully so he doesn't wake her, and grabs the phone, stepping out into the suite and pulling the door shut behind him when he sees Rachel's name on the display.
"I'm so sorry to bother you, but I need an enormous favor," she says when he answers. Her voice is quiet, but there's an unevenness to it. "I need to get back to Lima, but I don't think I should drive right now, and I can't get a hold of anyone else."
"Yeah, sure. What's going on?" he asks, already knowing and simultaneously dreading the answer.
He hears her let out a shaky breath. "Daddy's been taken to the hospital."
He clenches his teeth to keep himself from cursing, but fuck. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."
She's sitting on the couch with an overnight bag at her feet when Noah knocks and lets himself into the apartment, her back straight and her fingers laced together while she waits.
"Hey," he says quietly, closing the door behind him. "Are you okay?"
She stands and ignores his question, because no, she isn't okay, and she knows that he knows that. "Would you like something to drink for the drive?" she asks. "I have juice boxes."
He blinks at her. Really? Juice boxes? "Sure."
She steps into the kitchen, reappearing a moment later with an organic apple juice box. "I'm ready whenever you are," she says, handing him the juice and picking up her bag and her purse.
Neither of them speaks as they get into his truck and he starts driving them out of the city, though Rachel does pick up the juice box from where he set it in the cup holder, unwrapping the tiny straw and piercing it through the little foil hole in the top before setting it back in the cup holder. He takes a sip because now he feels like he has to.
She makes a little noise when he turns onto an on-ramp, reaching for her purse and taking out her wallet. She pulls out two twenty dollar bills and holds them out towards him. "Gas money," she explain when he looks at her questioningly.
"Fuck off," he tells her, though his tone is too gentle for the words. She desperately wants him to speak to her like he normally would. "I don't need your money, Rachel."
"I'm not going to let you drive me home without compensating you for fuel. Gas is too expensive."
"Shut up," he tells her seriously. "I'm not taking that."
She lets out a little sigh, tucking the bills into her pocket rather than putting them back in her wallet. She'll hide them somewhere in the truck when he isn't looking, in the glove box or behind the vanity mirror on the passenger side. She refuses to be his charity case just because her father is dying.
God, her father is dying.
It doesn't feel any more real now that it's imminent than it has for the last eleven months.
They're about halfway to Lima when Mia calls. She was still asleep when he left. He didn't see any reason to wake her up just because he needed to go, so he left a note telling her that he needed to drive Rachel to Lima and texted Sam a head's up.
"Is everything okay?" Mia asks when he answers.
"Not really," he answers honestly.
"Is it her dad?"
"Yeah." He forces himself not to look over at Rachel, though he can see her out of the corner of his eye, sitting perfectly straight with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap. Mia knows that he and Rachel are friends, and she knows about Andrew's cancer in the abstract sense that Puck's friend's dad is dying, though she doesn't know the details. She doesn't even know that Rachel has two dads.
"I'm sorry I interrupted your afternoon with her," Rachel says quietly after he's hung up.
He shakes his head. "Not a big deal."
They don't really talk for the rest of the trip, so the only sound in the truck is the country radio station that's playing softly. Rachel lets out an audible breath when they hit Lima city limits, and he heads straight towards the hospital without asking. He knows.
"Do you want me to come in with you?" he asks, looking over at her when he's sitting in the turn lane, waiting for a break in traffic so he can pull into the parking lot as the hospital.
She shakes her head. "Actually, could you do me another favor? Take my bag to my house?" He nods, turning the truck into the lot. "There's a key to the back door on a hook under the deck railing to the right of the steps."
"No problem." He pulls up next to the front doors. "Rach, call me if you need anything. Or my mom," he adds, knowing that she'd do anything for the Berrys.
She nods and thanks him for the ride before she climbs out of his truck, leaving her bag in the floorboard. He watches her walk to the doors and waits until she's inside to pull away.
*
Rachel hates hospitals. She's hated them since the summer she was nine years old, when she fell at a Jewish day camp and cut her arm on a piece of glass in the parking lot. She had to get stitches and a tetanus shot, and she always thought the nurse who cleaned the cut was a lot meaner than she needed to be. It's a cliché, which she hates, but it is what it is.
And it's only going to get worse.
Daddy was unconscious when she arrived at the hospital. That's how Dad found him when he came home for lunch; his breathing was labored, and he wouldn't wake up when Dad tried to rouse him. The doctor says that his lungs are shutting down, that he isn't getting adequate oxygen to his brain and, since Daddy made it very clear that he doesn't want to be put on life support for any reason, it's just a matter of time before his body shuts down completely.
So she's just sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a hospital room with all the lights but the fluorescent above the bed turned off, watching her unconscious father struggle to breathe.
It's torture.
Just after midnight, she can't take it any more. And the longer she sits here and thinks about being in the same room when the life finally leaves her daddy's body...she just can't take it, any of it.
Dad doesn't notice when she slips out of the room. He's sitting right up beside the bed, holding Daddy's hand and not saying a word.
She makes her way outside to make the call, respecting the hospital's no cell phone rule. She feels guilty the moment she starts scrolling through her contacts, but in the cost versus benefit of guilt and torture, she'd rather be guilty.
"What do you need?" Noah answers. She can tell that she woke him.
"I really hate to ask, especially since I've woken you up, and I'm su--"
"What do you need?" he interrupts, speaking firmly.
Her voice is smaller than he's ever heard it when she says, "Could you please pick me up from the hospital?"
She's sitting on the curb outside the hospital doors when he pulls up, her arms folded across her chest. It's cool for April, and there's just enough of a breeze to render her lightweight cardigan mostly useless at actually keeping her warm. It's warmer when she climbs into Noah's truck simply because there isn't any air moving. She buckles her seat belt while he pulls away from the curb, then lets out a little sigh. "I couldn't just sit there and wait any more," she tells him softly.
He knows Rachel well enough to know that this is her way of telling him that her daddy hasn't died, but that he is dying. Puck talked to his mom this afternoon about Andrew, and she'd called one of her nurse friends at the hospital who gave her just a little bit of information. (Since confidentiality laws apparently mean fuck all in Lima, Ohio if you know who to talk to.) He knows that Andrew was brought in unconscious and that he isn't expected to wake up.
He wishes there was something he could say or do for Rachel, but he has no idea what to say to her. He's never really lost anyone. His dad's mom died when he was eleven, but they hadn't even been close to that side of the family when his deadbeat dad was still around. He didn't go to her funeral, didn't even really feel sad about this woman he barely knew dying. It's completely different with Rachel's daddy.
He cuts the engine when he pulls into her driveway. The house is dark completely dark; the porch light isn't even on, which he thinks is weird even though he can't be sure that it is. He looks over at Rachel. She's got her hand on the door handle while she pulls her keys out of her purse. "You gonna be okay?" He sees her let out a breath more than he hears it, and she nods. "You want me to stay with you?"
"You don't have to do that, Noah."
"Rach."
"I'd like it if you stayed," she admits. The thought of being all alone right now, walking into that dark, silent house, isn't at all appealing.
The cat is sitting in the hallway when Rachel opens the door, a lot bigger than he was when Puck saw him last, back before school started. Rachel croons something at him, dropping her bag and keys on the table and walking up the stairs, flicking on every light whose switch she passes.
She hates how dark the house is.
She pulls her phone out of her pocket and drops it onto the bedside table, turning on the lamp even though the overhead light is already on. God, she's just so tired, but she knows she won't be able to sleep, and she can't stand sitting awake in a dark room. She grabs the remote for the television and tosses it to Puck. "Pick something," she orders. "Anything that makes noise."
She grabs the overnight bag that's on her bed - where Puck left it when he was here earlier - and disappears into the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind her.
He has no fucking clue what to do with her right now. Like, she's upset, and he gets that. She's just waiting to get this horrible news, the same news she's basically been waiting for for a year, but now it's imminent or whatever. It's fucking her up. That all makes sense. He just doesn't have any idea how to help.
Noah's sitting on her bed, leaned back against the headboard and watching television, when she comes out of the bathroom in a pair of sweats and a tee shirt. She's scrubbed her face clean of the makeup she applied before class this morning, and realized in the process that she hasn't cried once. Given the numbness that seems to be spreading through her chest, that probably makes some kind of sense.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Noah asks. She notices that he's sitting on the right side of the bed, "his" side, if it's possible to have such a thing when you're in someone else's bed.
She walks around the end of the bed so she can sit beside him. "No," she answers honestly.
Puck's at least a little bit relieved, and maybe that makes him a jerk, but he really, truly doesn't know what he'd say if she did want to talk.
She moves around until she's got her legs tucked under the blankets, slides down into the mattress a little. "Roseanne," she says, her lips curved just the tiniest bit. "They have an interesting family dynamic." He looks down at her and she shrugs one shoulder. "It's just very different from mine."
He nods, shifting on the bed so he's beneath the blankets beside her, even though he's still wearing jeans. "This show started before we were born," he points out, leaning back into the super-soft pillows she's got on her bed.
She shrugs. "That doesn't make it less interesting. I think it makes it more interesting, actually."
"Makes sense."
*
Her phone ringing is what wakes him up, and he squints into the brightness of the room when he opens his eyes, turning his head to watch her talk quietly into the receiver. She only talks for a couple of minutes, then she hangs up the phone and sets it back on her bedside table. Her lips are pressed together when she looks at him.
"He's gone," she whispers.
"Rach--"
"Don't say anything," she insists, her eyes wide. "Please."
"Okay." She relaxes a little, so he reaches out, wraps his hand around her upper arm and tugs a little so she's lying right up next to him, pressed against his side while he's got both arms wrapped around her. Holding her can't be the wrong thing to do right now, especially when she isn't pushing him away.
He keeps waiting for her breathing to get all fucked up when she starts crying, but that doesn't happen. Instead, her breathing evens out, and he realizes that it's because she's fallen asleep.
Chapter: 5/17
Rating: R
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Word Count: 6,950
Summary: And maybe it's an awful thing to think, but he wonders what's worse for her, losing New York or losing her dad.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Rachel's last final of the semester happens to fall on her birthday, but given that she doesn't feel particularly festive, she isn't too bothered. She's finished with her exam by noon and is on the road to Lima before two, sipping a soy gingerbread latte from Starbucks and listening to a playlist of her favorite Christmas songs while she drives.
Winter break is a relief. Rachel has always liked school, but this is perhaps the first time in her life when she isn't pursuing the arts as part of her academics. All of her classes this semester were straightforward gen eds, and frankly, it was boring. But she refuses to declare her major here at OSU; she's approaching it more like one would approach a community college, as a chance to get the basics out of the way before getting into the classes that really matter, focusing in on the thing that you really want to do.
She'll do what she wants to do when she gets to New York.
And it's stressful, going back and forth, feeling torn between two places. She goes home every weekend now, unwilling to give up any of her time with her daddy while she still has it. She barely has time for the friends she has, let alone the time to meet new people at school the way she knows she's supposed to be. She still has lunch with Noah once a week, and she and Santana watch House every Monday night. (Even if it is a torture of sorts, watching a medical drama, Hugh Laurie is an exceptional actor, and Santana started watching when Olivia Wilde joined the cast.) But she can't even remember the last time she saw Finn, he's so caught up with football practices and such, though he doesn't yet play in games, and she certainly isn't befriending anyone new.
Maybe that's for the better though. Why put the effort into building new friendships in Ohio when she's only going to be here for a little longer? What's the sense in subjecting herself to even more goodbyes when the time comes?
Rock Hudson is sitting in the front hall when Rachel lets herself into the house, his tail curled around his feet while he watches her with enormous green eyes. He's starting to lose some of his kittenish looks, which she finds more sad than she expected. There's something inexplicably adorable about a kitten, and she hates to see him lose it.
She really loves this cat, the way that he spends most of his time trailing Daddy through the house, but is in the habit of sleeping next to her if she's doing reading on her bed in the afternoon or early evening. She's never heard a cat purr louder than Rock, a deep, soothing sound that's nearly constant when he's asleep. She also likes the idea, however absurd, that Rock is watching out for her fathers, keeping an eye on him in his cat way.
She's sitting at the table with her fathers after dinner, eating mango sorbet and discussing the particulars (and ridiculousness) of Freud's stages of psycho-sexual development when the doorbell rings. Dad goes to answer it, and reappears a moment later with Santana. "You're coming with me," she girl announces, sliding into the open seat a the table. She snags Rachel's spoon from her hand and takes a little bite of sorbet.
"Pardon me?"
Santana looks at her pointedly. "It's your birthday, and we're going to celebrate."
Rachel glances at her daddy. "But--"
"Go," he interrupts with a smile. "Have fun. Be safe," he adds, almost like an afterthought. Rachel is very open with her parents, and while she isn't prone to crazy nights out, they're aware that she drinks on occasion, usually with Santana and/or Noah. She appreciates that she doesn't have to lie to them.
"Fine," she says, holding up her hands.
They end up at a little dive bar just outside the city limits, and while Rachel has her fake ID, Santana's cleavage is apparently all the man behind the bar needs to see to be convinced to serve them a pitcher of margaritas. And another.
And another.
The more tequila they drink, the sillier their conversation gets. Rachel always finds herself wishing that she and Santana had gotten over their mutual animosity sooner than they did, that they could have had this sort of relationship from the beginning of their time together in glee club rather than only coming to a sort of tacit agreement to leave one another alone sometime in the middle of senior year. Of course, they've both grown enormously since then, and maybe it's that growth that has allowed them to become such friends.
Adding alcohol certainly doesn't hurt.
It's all silliness, the conversations they're having, and that's just fine with Rachel. She's more than content to listen to Santana's stories about her weekends out, her anecdotes about the men (and women) she's bedded since school started. Rachel's never really had any girlfriends, so talking to Santana like this is still a wonderful novelty, even if it's all sort of sitting on the surface.
It's when Santana suggests getting pitcher number four that Rachel offers the alternative of calling someone to come and take them home so they don't spend their entire Saturday throwing up and feeling terrible. Rachel knows her own tolerance, and if she's being completely honest, she's already had more to drink than she should have. Still, she has enough self-preservational instincts to decline any more tequila.
Noah is the one who comes to get them, sauntering into the bar like he's been here a hundred times (possibly he has) and taking a seat next to Rachel. "'S'up, lushes?"
Santana rolls her eyes. "Obviously, drinking margaritas for Rachel's birthday is what's up."
"Hey, that's right. Happy birthday," Puck says, nudging Rachel with his elbow. "You're like, twenty-five now, right?"
Rachel just rolls her eyes, tapping a button on her phone to illuminate the screen. "Technically, it isn't my birthday any more," she points out when she sees that it's after midnight.
"Fuck that," Santana interjects. "It's your birthday until you go to sleep. It's like a rule."
Rachel blinks. "If you say so."
Rachel ends up riding bitch in Puck's truck because Santana has always refused to do it, even when they were dating, and 'just because it's her birthday doesn't mean that shit changes.' Whatever. Santana's house is closer to the bar than Rachel's, so he drops her off first, and Rachel stays there in the middle seat even after Santana's gone.
"Oh, my gosh," she says suddenly, looking up at him with huge eyes. "I can't go home."
"Because you're drunk?"
"No. Well, yes, but because chemo has made Daddy a really light sleeper. I can't wake him up because I decided to go drinking with Santana."
It didn't even occur to her before now, which makes her feel like a terrible daughter, but in her own defense, she doesn't generally go out at all when she's home for the weekends. The whole point of being at home is to spend time with her fathers, which she would decidedly not be doing if she ran out with whoever every time she was home. (And really, who? Brittany and her friends who are still in high school? That isn't very likely.)
"I think you just want to sleep all up next to this," Noah says cockily. Rachel pretends her cheeks don't warm a little at the thought.
"Your mother won't mind, will she?" She realizes that she's just invited herself to his house, but he doesn't seem too upset by it, so she doesn't dwell. Just like she isn't dwelling on the idea of sleeping beside him again. Besides, she isn't sure that either of those times - crying herself to exhaustion and passing out drunk - really count as sleeping at all.
"Nah. She'll go on one of her 'you should marry that Rachel Berry' jags, but whatever." He shrugs his shoulders as he rolls through a stop sigh. "I can handle it."
"You should marry Rachel Berry?" she repeats, her eyebrows raised as she turns to look at him. Her eyes are sort of glassy with booze under the street lights, and her hair's kind of a mess from the wind outside and, you know, being drunk.
He just shrugs his shoulders again, a little grin on his lips when he glances over at her.
She busies herself with sending Dad a text message while Noah drives, letting her parents know that she's safe and well for the evening and will see them tomorrow, and ignoring the fact that she can feel herself blushing as Noah drives through Lima's deserted streets.
He tells her to go on upstairs when he unlocks the front door of his house, and she does as he says, not even bothering to pull her coat off before going up to his room and pushing the door most the way closed behind her. Noah's been home for a day longer than she has, she knows, and where there's still a packed bag and a few odds and ends from her apartment that she wanted in Lima sitting around her own bedroom, his things have all been put away. The room is tidy, like it was at Thanksgiving, tidier than it was all summer; it's a sign that no one really lives here, and she thinks that it's the sort of room that looks like it's meant to have clutter. The tidiness is strange.
She's shrugging out of her red wool coat when he comes in carrying two bottles of water and a box of Wheat Thins. "Are you going to be hungover tomorrow?" he asks, waiting until she's draped her coat over the back of his desk chair to hand her a bottle of water. Puck doesn't really care if she is, but he likes to have a little warning.
She shakes her head, but it takes her three tries to get the lid screwed off the water bottle, which leads him to believe she isn't really a reliable judge of her own drunkenness. "Can I borrow something to sleep in?" she asks in this quiet little voice.
"Yeah."
She watches him open a dresser drawer and pull out a gray McKinley tee shirt everyone she knows from high school has - Rachel has one herself, albeit in a smaller size. He hands it to her, then his eyes flick quickly down her body and back to her eyes.
"Lemme find you a pair of shorts or something." He knows there are a pair or two of the tiny cotton ones Santana used to wear for cheerleading practice that somehow wound up in his room permanently. (He wonders, now, what the fuck she wore home if she left her shorts at his.)
"It's fine," she says, shaking her head when he looks like he's going to move again. "The shirt is long enough to cover everything."
She turns to face the wall when she pulls her sweater up over her head, and she isn't ashamed to admit that it's because she's shy at the idea of being in any state of undress in front of Noah. She waits until she's wearing his tee shirt, which falls to the middle of her thighs, to shimmy out of her jeans, tossing them over the back of his desk chair with her coat. He's unbuckling his belt when she turns around, his tee shirt already discarded. "Which side is yours?" she asks, keeping her eyes on his face as he pushes his jeans down around his feet.
Her cheeks are a little pink when he nods at the right side of the bed, where his alarm clock sits. He waits until she's slipped beneath the covers on the to flick off the light, crossing the dark room slowly so he can get in beside her. She's already curled up on her side with her back to him, and once his eyes adjust to the dimness, he can see her hair fanned out over the pillow. "Night, Rach."
"Good night, Noah." She can feel how warm he is behind her, and she resists the urge to roll over and curl into his side. It's been ages since she fell asleep all wrapped up in someone's arms, and she misses it. She's always tried to resist being the needy drunk though, tries not to cling to the people around her even when she feels compelled. Noah was nice enough to pick them up from the bar and to let her stay in his bed. She isn't going to take advantage of his hospitality any more be pressing herself up against him.
She jumps when he says her name, startled even though his voice is low and sleepy. "Happy birthday."
She blinks into the darkness around her. "Thanks."
It doesn't feel so happy. She's spent the entire day thinking about the fact that this is the last birthday she'll ever have with her daddy alive. It's a thought that follows her constantly, with everything she does, and it makes it difficult to feel festive about anything.
*
Puck's pretty glad to be get back to school after winter break. Yeah, having his own room at home and having all that time to fuck around is awesome, but he's also not used to having to check in with anyone when he wants to stay out, not used to trying to watch his mouth because his sister's around and it pisses his mom off when he swears. (Which is fucking ridiculous, given that Abby's been known to drop the occasional curse herself. She's twelve. It's not like she's never heard someone swear.)
Sam is kind of cramping Puck's style though. See, the guy has decided that he's going to try to become a resident adviser next year. He spouts off a bunch of bullshit (not really) about how being an RA will get his room and board paid for, and he'll get vouchers for the bookstore, not to mention how good it's going to look on resumes and blah, blah, blah. It sounds like a huge fucking headache. Puck's actually a considerate guy, so he makes a point of getting rid of the alcohol he had squirreled away in the back of his wardrobe and not deliberately pissing off their RA just in case the dude somehow has pull over whether or not Sam gets hired.
That means that he can't pregame in the dorms any more, and since Rachel's apartment is his booze storage, he ends up over there a lot more than he did last semester. Some of that is on weekends when she's back in Lima and he has to let himself in with the spare key he has, but it's not like he's hanging out in her place when she isn't home. That would just be weird. So he goes in, gets what he needs, and leaves. She knows he does it though, because she leaves him little notes in her neat print, pink post-its stuck to the front of the bottles in the cabinet above her fridge (the one he knows she has to stand on a chair to reach) reminding him to be careful or suggesting that he try mixing the vodka with the cranberry-pomegranate juice she has in her fridge. (It'll be delicious!)
And then there's the girl from the computer lab, Mia.
She waits until February to call him, and he's actually forgotten about her. Then, since it's two weeks before Valentine's Day, he's half-scared to call her back. Chicks trap you with that shit, and it somehow turns into a thing when it's just a thing, and Puck isn't really interested in anything but getting his dick wet. Okay, maybe that's a little extreme, but he definitely isn't interested in winding up being somebody's boyfriend just because he starts hanging out with her a week before Valentine's Day.
But it turns out that Mia's actually pretty fucking cool.
They start with just texting, which is probably pretty stupid given that they live less than a hundred yards from each other, but whatever. She comes to dinner with him and Sam sometimes, and Santana doesn't think Mia's a complete bitch when she meets her. (Not that that means anything; she half-hated Quinn and definitely thought she was a bitch, but they were still friends.) Mia doesn't really expect anything of Puck other than doing what he says he's going to do, which makes sense. She isn't playing games with him, and it kind of feels like it did when he thought he was in love with Lauren or whatever back in high school, when he really wanted to get to know her and actually be something together.
Except Mia's smoking hot and he wants to get her naked like, yesterday. So.
She's a creative writing major, and she takes school really seriously, but Puck convinces her to go out with him on a Thursday night before midterms, citing the fact that she just turned in her zine for her poetry class and can take one weeknight away to have fun and the bottle of Seagram's he bought after she told him that she liked gin.
The house they're going to is just a few blocks off campus, and Rachel's place is on the way, so he can pick up the gin without feeling like an ass for bringing booze into the guys' room.
Rachel is sitting on her couch in a pair of pink plaid lounge pants and a mismatched OSU sweatshirt of Santana's, reading an analysis of the myth of Sisyphus and watching an old Scrubs rerun when Noah knocks on the door. He sent her a text to let her know he was coming, so she calls out a 'come in' and turns the page in her book.
She's a little surprised when he walks in with a tall, gorgeous redhead.
Rachel is immediately uncomfortable, frumpy and ugly in her ill-fitting sweatshirt and glorified pajama pants, sitting in the same room as this girl with knee-high leather boots and perfectly drawn cat's eye liner. "Hi," she says, standing and setting her book on the coffee table. She's nothing if not well-mannered, so she smiles at the girl. "I'm Rachel."
"Mia." Rachel watches a full body shiver go through the girl. It's freezing outside. "It's nice to meet you."
"Gin," Noah interjects, his hands still shoved in his pockets.
Rachel rolls her eyes a little, and her hand comes up to touch the ends of her hair when she starts towards the kitchen. "Would you like some tea?" she offers, ignoring Puck and looking over her shoulder at Mia. He really hopes she says no, because he really wants to get to this party.
(He's sort of dying to know what Mia's like when she drunks, if he's being honest. But he does know better than to say that shit out loud.)
"No, thanks," Mia says, and Puck does a little internal fist pump. "I'm sorry we interrupted your reading."
Rachel waves her hand, grabbing the yellow tea kettle from where it sits on the stove top while Noah reaches into the cabinet over the fridge for his liquor. "It's no problem. I'm used to Puck's intrusions."
He looks over at her, standing at the sink filling the kettle. It's weird to hear his nickname come out of her mouth. Not unheard of, but a little weird. She doesn't even acknowledge that he's looking at her, just turns off the faucet and sets her kettle on a burner, turning a knob to heat the electric coil. "Are you sure you don't want to come out with us?" he asks her.
She leans against the counter, tucks her hands in the pocket of her sweatshirt, and looks at him. "No, thank you. I have reading to finish for class tomorrow."
Maybe it makes him an ass, especially since she's his friend, but he's relieved she said no. "All right. We'll get out of your way."
She follows them to the door so she can lock it behind them, telling Mia that it was nice to meet her and reminding Noah to call if he needs a ride. And once she's alone again, she tries to figure out exactly why she's feeling this tightness in her stomach that she recognizes as jealousy.
She knows that she's missing out on this whole college experience thing. There's an enormous part of her that wants everything that Noah and Sam and Santana and even Finn get to have. She wants to flirt with the boy in her economics class who's been watching her not-so-discreetly from day one, wants to indulge in a semi-ilicit affair, wants to go out drinking on a Thursday night because she doesn't have to worry about being able to drive back to Lima the next afternoon.
She wants to be able to go out with Noah right now, to drink too much gin and have fun without feeling guilty for forgetting for just five minutes about her father and how miserable he's been for the last month.
The tea kettle whistling in the kitchen pulls her out of her thoughts, forcing her, for just two minutes, to focus on the motions of preparing a cup of herbal tea for herself. It doesn't do any good to think about any of this, what she's missing out on and what could have been if her father hadn't gotten sick and she'd been able to go to New York like she'd always planned.
It's a train of thought she's ridden plenty of times since last May, since the day when she called her perfect school in her perfect city and told them that she wasn't coming. It never fails to make her feel guilty and selfish and sad. She tries not to let herself dwell in that space; it's too easy to get sucked in and spend days and days feeling terrible, but sometimes she just can't help it.
It keeps her up late, these thoughts, and the sound of her alarm the next morning seems like the worst thing ever in the moment. She finds it incredibly difficult to focus in her astronomy lecture, and instead of paying attention to what her professor is saying about Jupiter's moons, she's zoning out completely and absently drawing little constellations of stars in the margins of her notebook. (Later, when she looks back, she'll see that she actually was drawing constellations, proper constellations.) The professor dismisses the class a few minutes early, and for all of the material that she paid attention to (basically none), Rachel might as well have driven back to Lima last night instead of waiting until after class.
The house is quiet when she finally gets back to Lima. Dad is still at work, and Rachel finds Daddy napping with Rock in his bedroom after she's dumped her things.
She ends up crawling in bed beside him, not even pretending any more than the sight of his nearly gray skin and the gauntness of his features doesn't make her want to cry. His breathing is shallow, even when he's asleep, but she lays there and watches the way his chest rises and falls with each breath. It's comforting that he's still breathing, and the rhythm of that combined with the sound of a purring cat lulls her to sleep.
Diane Sawyer's voice is what wakes her, talking about the latest Republican versus Democrat nonsense in Washington, and Rachel opens her eyes to see Daddy propped up against a mound of pillows. Rock's head is resting on his thigh while he scratches the space between the cat's ears. "There's sleeping beauty," he says, glancing down at his daughter.
She pushes herself up against the pillows so she's a little less horizontal. "How are you feeling?"
He just shakes his head, glancing skyward in a gesture approaching an eye roll.
She hates seeing him like this, obviously in pain. Daddy has always been the strong one in the family, literally and figuratively, and seeing him thin and weak and exhausted is more than a little difficult. But it's not something they talk about as a family, not explicitly. It isn't quite denial, even if it may look that way to someone on the outside. It's just that they all three know the score, and they don't need to discuss it endlessly, to bring up what's right in front of them. He's no longer on chemo, and all of the medications he's taking are meant to ease pain and discomfort, like his persistent nausea.
At this point, Daddy is just waiting to die.
He's refused to go to the hospital, despite the suggestions of his oncologist and the hospice nurse who comes periodically. "I know that as soon as I go to the hospital, I'm going to die," he's said. "I'm not going until I have to."
And as hard as it is to see him like this, she understands and respects his position, so she doesn't bring it up. And every time her phone rings, dread washes over her, because she just knows that this is the call telling her that he's been taken to the hospital.
They lay together watching the news and discussing politics until Dad comes home with dinner, which they all eat together on trays in her fathers' big bed.
*
Puck's phone vibrating on his desk is what wakes him, but he's taking a nap with Mia while Sam's in his two-hour history lecture, so he ignores it. It's probably his mom wanting to check in, or maybe Finn wanting to make plans for the weekend; nothing that can't wait until later when he's not dozing with a hot ass redhead in his bed.
But then it starts vibrating again immediately after it stops, which is like the universal answer your fucking phone signal, so he pulls away from Mia, carefully so he doesn't wake her, and grabs the phone, stepping out into the suite and pulling the door shut behind him when he sees Rachel's name on the display.
"I'm so sorry to bother you, but I need an enormous favor," she says when he answers. Her voice is quiet, but there's an unevenness to it. "I need to get back to Lima, but I don't think I should drive right now, and I can't get a hold of anyone else."
"Yeah, sure. What's going on?" he asks, already knowing and simultaneously dreading the answer.
He hears her let out a shaky breath. "Daddy's been taken to the hospital."
He clenches his teeth to keep himself from cursing, but fuck. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."
She's sitting on the couch with an overnight bag at her feet when Noah knocks and lets himself into the apartment, her back straight and her fingers laced together while she waits.
"Hey," he says quietly, closing the door behind him. "Are you okay?"
She stands and ignores his question, because no, she isn't okay, and she knows that he knows that. "Would you like something to drink for the drive?" she asks. "I have juice boxes."
He blinks at her. Really? Juice boxes? "Sure."
She steps into the kitchen, reappearing a moment later with an organic apple juice box. "I'm ready whenever you are," she says, handing him the juice and picking up her bag and her purse.
Neither of them speaks as they get into his truck and he starts driving them out of the city, though Rachel does pick up the juice box from where he set it in the cup holder, unwrapping the tiny straw and piercing it through the little foil hole in the top before setting it back in the cup holder. He takes a sip because now he feels like he has to.
She makes a little noise when he turns onto an on-ramp, reaching for her purse and taking out her wallet. She pulls out two twenty dollar bills and holds them out towards him. "Gas money," she explain when he looks at her questioningly.
"Fuck off," he tells her, though his tone is too gentle for the words. She desperately wants him to speak to her like he normally would. "I don't need your money, Rachel."
"I'm not going to let you drive me home without compensating you for fuel. Gas is too expensive."
"Shut up," he tells her seriously. "I'm not taking that."
She lets out a little sigh, tucking the bills into her pocket rather than putting them back in her wallet. She'll hide them somewhere in the truck when he isn't looking, in the glove box or behind the vanity mirror on the passenger side. She refuses to be his charity case just because her father is dying.
God, her father is dying.
It doesn't feel any more real now that it's imminent than it has for the last eleven months.
They're about halfway to Lima when Mia calls. She was still asleep when he left. He didn't see any reason to wake her up just because he needed to go, so he left a note telling her that he needed to drive Rachel to Lima and texted Sam a head's up.
"Is everything okay?" Mia asks when he answers.
"Not really," he answers honestly.
"Is it her dad?"
"Yeah." He forces himself not to look over at Rachel, though he can see her out of the corner of his eye, sitting perfectly straight with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap. Mia knows that he and Rachel are friends, and she knows about Andrew's cancer in the abstract sense that Puck's friend's dad is dying, though she doesn't know the details. She doesn't even know that Rachel has two dads.
"I'm sorry I interrupted your afternoon with her," Rachel says quietly after he's hung up.
He shakes his head. "Not a big deal."
They don't really talk for the rest of the trip, so the only sound in the truck is the country radio station that's playing softly. Rachel lets out an audible breath when they hit Lima city limits, and he heads straight towards the hospital without asking. He knows.
"Do you want me to come in with you?" he asks, looking over at her when he's sitting in the turn lane, waiting for a break in traffic so he can pull into the parking lot as the hospital.
She shakes her head. "Actually, could you do me another favor? Take my bag to my house?" He nods, turning the truck into the lot. "There's a key to the back door on a hook under the deck railing to the right of the steps."
"No problem." He pulls up next to the front doors. "Rach, call me if you need anything. Or my mom," he adds, knowing that she'd do anything for the Berrys.
She nods and thanks him for the ride before she climbs out of his truck, leaving her bag in the floorboard. He watches her walk to the doors and waits until she's inside to pull away.
*
Rachel hates hospitals. She's hated them since the summer she was nine years old, when she fell at a Jewish day camp and cut her arm on a piece of glass in the parking lot. She had to get stitches and a tetanus shot, and she always thought the nurse who cleaned the cut was a lot meaner than she needed to be. It's a cliché, which she hates, but it is what it is.
And it's only going to get worse.
Daddy was unconscious when she arrived at the hospital. That's how Dad found him when he came home for lunch; his breathing was labored, and he wouldn't wake up when Dad tried to rouse him. The doctor says that his lungs are shutting down, that he isn't getting adequate oxygen to his brain and, since Daddy made it very clear that he doesn't want to be put on life support for any reason, it's just a matter of time before his body shuts down completely.
So she's just sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a hospital room with all the lights but the fluorescent above the bed turned off, watching her unconscious father struggle to breathe.
It's torture.
Just after midnight, she can't take it any more. And the longer she sits here and thinks about being in the same room when the life finally leaves her daddy's body...she just can't take it, any of it.
Dad doesn't notice when she slips out of the room. He's sitting right up beside the bed, holding Daddy's hand and not saying a word.
She makes her way outside to make the call, respecting the hospital's no cell phone rule. She feels guilty the moment she starts scrolling through her contacts, but in the cost versus benefit of guilt and torture, she'd rather be guilty.
"What do you need?" Noah answers. She can tell that she woke him.
"I really hate to ask, especially since I've woken you up, and I'm su--"
"What do you need?" he interrupts, speaking firmly.
Her voice is smaller than he's ever heard it when she says, "Could you please pick me up from the hospital?"
She's sitting on the curb outside the hospital doors when he pulls up, her arms folded across her chest. It's cool for April, and there's just enough of a breeze to render her lightweight cardigan mostly useless at actually keeping her warm. It's warmer when she climbs into Noah's truck simply because there isn't any air moving. She buckles her seat belt while he pulls away from the curb, then lets out a little sigh. "I couldn't just sit there and wait any more," she tells him softly.
He knows Rachel well enough to know that this is her way of telling him that her daddy hasn't died, but that he is dying. Puck talked to his mom this afternoon about Andrew, and she'd called one of her nurse friends at the hospital who gave her just a little bit of information. (Since confidentiality laws apparently mean fuck all in Lima, Ohio if you know who to talk to.) He knows that Andrew was brought in unconscious and that he isn't expected to wake up.
He wishes there was something he could say or do for Rachel, but he has no idea what to say to her. He's never really lost anyone. His dad's mom died when he was eleven, but they hadn't even been close to that side of the family when his deadbeat dad was still around. He didn't go to her funeral, didn't even really feel sad about this woman he barely knew dying. It's completely different with Rachel's daddy.
He cuts the engine when he pulls into her driveway. The house is dark completely dark; the porch light isn't even on, which he thinks is weird even though he can't be sure that it is. He looks over at Rachel. She's got her hand on the door handle while she pulls her keys out of her purse. "You gonna be okay?" He sees her let out a breath more than he hears it, and she nods. "You want me to stay with you?"
"You don't have to do that, Noah."
"Rach."
"I'd like it if you stayed," she admits. The thought of being all alone right now, walking into that dark, silent house, isn't at all appealing.
The cat is sitting in the hallway when Rachel opens the door, a lot bigger than he was when Puck saw him last, back before school started. Rachel croons something at him, dropping her bag and keys on the table and walking up the stairs, flicking on every light whose switch she passes.
She hates how dark the house is.
She pulls her phone out of her pocket and drops it onto the bedside table, turning on the lamp even though the overhead light is already on. God, she's just so tired, but she knows she won't be able to sleep, and she can't stand sitting awake in a dark room. She grabs the remote for the television and tosses it to Puck. "Pick something," she orders. "Anything that makes noise."
She grabs the overnight bag that's on her bed - where Puck left it when he was here earlier - and disappears into the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind her.
He has no fucking clue what to do with her right now. Like, she's upset, and he gets that. She's just waiting to get this horrible news, the same news she's basically been waiting for for a year, but now it's imminent or whatever. It's fucking her up. That all makes sense. He just doesn't have any idea how to help.
Noah's sitting on her bed, leaned back against the headboard and watching television, when she comes out of the bathroom in a pair of sweats and a tee shirt. She's scrubbed her face clean of the makeup she applied before class this morning, and realized in the process that she hasn't cried once. Given the numbness that seems to be spreading through her chest, that probably makes some kind of sense.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Noah asks. She notices that he's sitting on the right side of the bed, "his" side, if it's possible to have such a thing when you're in someone else's bed.
She walks around the end of the bed so she can sit beside him. "No," she answers honestly.
Puck's at least a little bit relieved, and maybe that makes him a jerk, but he really, truly doesn't know what he'd say if she did want to talk.
She moves around until she's got her legs tucked under the blankets, slides down into the mattress a little. "Roseanne," she says, her lips curved just the tiniest bit. "They have an interesting family dynamic." He looks down at her and she shrugs one shoulder. "It's just very different from mine."
He nods, shifting on the bed so he's beneath the blankets beside her, even though he's still wearing jeans. "This show started before we were born," he points out, leaning back into the super-soft pillows she's got on her bed.
She shrugs. "That doesn't make it less interesting. I think it makes it more interesting, actually."
"Makes sense."
*
Her phone ringing is what wakes him up, and he squints into the brightness of the room when he opens his eyes, turning his head to watch her talk quietly into the receiver. She only talks for a couple of minutes, then she hangs up the phone and sets it back on her bedside table. Her lips are pressed together when she looks at him.
"He's gone," she whispers.
"Rach--"
"Don't say anything," she insists, her eyes wide. "Please."
"Okay." She relaxes a little, so he reaches out, wraps his hand around her upper arm and tugs a little so she's lying right up next to him, pressed against his side while he's got both arms wrapped around her. Holding her can't be the wrong thing to do right now, especially when she isn't pushing him away.
He keeps waiting for her breathing to get all fucked up when she starts crying, but that doesn't happen. Instead, her breathing evens out, and he realizes that it's because she's fallen asleep.