That the Moon Elbowed the Stars 6/17
Title: That the Moon Elbowed the Stars
Chapter: 6/17
Rating: R
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Word Count: 5,230
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 has never really understood the concept of taking food to the relatives of the deceased, but it seems that that's the way it goes. It's just that it feels so wasteful. She's forced to start storing things in the refrigerator in the garage when the one in the kitchen is full. Scalloped potatoes, watergate salad, three different noodle kugels, cheesecake, zucchini bread, and even an entire brisket from Mrs. Sherman at temple, a woman who doesn't know the meaning of moderation if her own girth is any indication. And while Rachel knows that the majority of those from temple who are bringing food are completely aware of her veganism, she also knows that that there's this strange resistance to her dietary choices, and, as a result, very little of the food being brought to the house is anything that she would ever consider eating.
Of course, her choosing not to eat the things that aren't vegan isn't much different than her inability to eat much of anything that is, and Dad doesn't have much of an appetite either.
Daddy made all of the arrangements for what was supposed to happen after his death, which she supposes is the only benefit of dying the way that he did; he had the time and the ability to ensure that things happen the way he wanted them to. He's being cremated, so there won't be a traditional funeral, though they are holding a wake at the house.
The only positive outcome Rachel can see, as the day approaches, is that maybe the guests will get rid of some of this food.
*
Puck agrees to go to Andrew's wake with his mom because Abby's at school, and even though he'd originally planned to go with Finn and Santana (Sam has an exam he can't get out of, so he isn't coming), he's not going to make his mom go alone. The woman badgers him about not wearing a tie, so he takes the food containers she's carrying to shut her up.
It doesn't work, but whatever.
The Berrys' street is totally lined with cars, which doesn't surprise Puck at all. There are people in Lima who will never accept a gay couple, and Rachel wasn't always popular with kids her own age, but for the most part, the Berrys are pretty well-liked. And it always seems like when someone who isn't a senior citizen dies, people really come out of the woodwork to talk about how it's so sad and such a tragedy.
His mom goes to talk to her group of gossipy ladies from temple as soon as they walk through the door, and Puck heads back to the kitchen to drop the stuff he's carrying. Rachel's standing there talking to Santana, and Finn's with them, a plate in his hand while he shovels food into his mouth. She's wearing a navy blue dress that he thinks is silk, and her hair is pulled back away from her face so he can really see how tired she looks.
"Oh, good," she says when she sees him. "More food." She glances pointedly around the kitchen, where he can see that both the big center island and the table are covered with half-full dishes of basically anything you could ever want, plus plenty of stuff he'd never touch.
"Yeah, well, you know my mom," he offers, pushing some things aside so he can set down the containers he's carrying. "It's some lentil thing and blueberry lemon muffins. Mom found the recipes on some vegan website," he tells her, partially because he thinks she'd want to know, but mostly because his mom told him to make sure he mentioned it.
Rachel's face sort of falls, but then she says, "That's so nice," and he's kind of confused. "Most people haven't even bothered." She looks around the kitchen again, her eyes lingering on Finn for a moment. "Not that most of it will get eaten anyhow."
Noah doesn't say anything, and Rachel supposes that makes sense. What exactly is he supposed to say to that? But honestly, Marlene Puckerman is just about her favorite person in the world right now.
"I'm going to go thank your mother," she says after a moment. "Eat something. Please."
She needs to stop hiding in the kitchen anyhow. Sure, people have been in and out, dropping off food (food she's already planning on taking to the women's shelter) and making plates to eat in the dining room, but she's the hostess and she needs to take care of her guests.
Whose bright idea was it to make the family of the deceased host everyone they know anyway?
She finds Marlene talking to Mrs. Sherman, and even though it's impolite, she injects herself into their conversation. "Thank you so much for making the effort to prepare vegan recipes for me," she says, keeping her voice sweet. "It's so thoughtful, and it seems that most people can't be bothered."
Mrs. Sherman excuses herself with a huff, and Rachel manages to hold in her eye roll until the woman is out of sight. "I think I hate her."
Marlene lets out a little snort of laughter. "She's a shrew."
She almost manages a smile. "I really do appreciate it though. The food," she clarifies. "It means a lot that you would make the effort for me."
"Of course, sweetheart." Marlene looks at her for a moment, her gaze sweeping over Rachel's body. "How are you?"
Rachel considers the question carefully, because she thinks it's the first time she's been asked today by someone who really meant it, save Santana. (Who accepted it easily when Rachel told her that she didn't know how she was.) Everyone else asked it as a cursory question, something they had to say before they got to whatever it was they wanted to say, whatever vapid, useless thing they wanted to tell her about her father. It kills her how everyone wants to talk about him like they knew him better than she did; he's her daddy.
"I'm fine, I guess," she says after a long moment, shrugging one shoulder. "I've never been this sad, but I'm not about to fall to pieces, so I suppose that means I'm fine."
"You let me know if you need anything, do you hear me?" Rachel nods, finds herself being pulled into a tight hug. "I mean that, Rachel."
"I know," she tells Marlene seriously when she pulls away. She really does, and not just because the woman has told her that repeatedly. She can feel how much Marlene means it when she says it, and she genuinely appreciates it, even if she has no intention of actually asking the woman for anything.
The house is crowded with people until nearly six p.m., and Rachel locks the door behind the last one, flicking off the porch light when she does. Honestly, it's more symbolic than anything, given that the sun hasn't set yet, but it makes her feel better. Turning off the porch light is the subtle 'stay away' signal that she just needs to put out into the world right now.
Mrs. Simon from next door helped Nana cleaning up the kitchen when guests started trickling out, and Rachel makes a mental note to send her a thank you when she walks into the nearly-spotless room. Nana is loading the dishwasher, and Dad is sitting at the table, picking at a plate of food that Nana has obviously made for him, going by the size of it.
"You should eat something, angelfish," he tells her when she sits across from him.
She shakes her head. "I'm not hungry." She hasn't eaten since breakfast, but the thought of eating anything makes her stomach roll. The sheer volume of food that has passed through her home - that is still in her home - makes her queasy. Besides that, she hasn't had much of an appetite all weekend.
"Nonsense," Nana says. "At least have one of those muffins Mrs. Puckerman brought."
"Fine," she agrees, not wanting to fight with her grandmother. And she keeps her mouth shut when, minutes later, the plate set in front of her has two muffins, warmed and split and smeared with a touch of margarine, and is accompanied by a glass of soy milk. "I think I'll just take this upstairs and eat it while I change."
Nana sets her hands on her hips. "I expect and empty plate and glass, Rachel Barbra."
"Yes, ma'am," she agrees with a little smile.
She leaves the plate on her dresser, but carries the glass into the bathroom and pours the contents down the drain immediately because she knows the soy milk won't sit well on her empty stomach, however well-meaning her grandmother is. She changes into a pair of sweats and a tee shirt, and she manages to eat half of one of the muffins before it starts making her feel queasy.
Because she hates to make her father or her grandmother worry even under the best of circumstances, and this certainly isn't that, she pushes open her window and crumbles the rest of the muffins onto the shingles of the porch roof for the birds so the food doesn't go completely to waste.
She falls asleep just after seven, curled up on the bed with Rock the way she has all weekend, an episode of Gossip Girl playing and the lights still burning.
*
He's sitting in the dining hall with Mia one night, eating way more french fries than he probably should because that salisbury steak shit they're serving is terrible. They're talking about their plans for the four-day Easter weekend, and while Puck isn't doing anything, Mia's family apparently takes the holiday pretty seriously. She has a bunch of little cousins, so they have dinner and an Easter egg hunt that actually sounds like a lot of fun, even if it's not a holiday Puck gives a fuck about.
"My grandma always uses it as an opportunity to ask about my love life," she says, reaching over the steal a fry from his plate. He raises an eyebrow. "What do you think I should tell her this year?"
They've never talked about this thing they're doing, with the exception of once way back at the beginning, when she told him that she wasn't going to fuck him if he was planning on fucking around with other girls. Mia isn't a girl who plays games, so that's not what this is. She's just asking, which is actually pretty cute.
He shrugs one shoulder and takes a drink of his Coke. "You could tell her about your hot ass boyfriend, but since it's Easter and whatever, you should probably leave out the fact that he thinks all the Jesus stuff is mostly bullshit."
Mia laughs because she isn't religious, not really (they've talked about it), and besides that, she's used to him. "Yeah, I'll be sure to leave that part out."
And just like that, Puck ends up with a girlfriend his freshman year of college, and even though he really never wanted it, he's not mad that he has it now.
*
It turns out that if you want to transfer to a school in New York, the city that everyone wants to be in, you need to start getting yourself together almost a year in advance. At least, that's what Rachel learns when she starts making calls to NYU towards the end of April, once she's back at OSU and back in the swing of things, so to speak. In any case, she's attending all of her classes and completing her assignments, and she's back in dance classes even if she feels like she's simply going through the motions.
The woman on the phone from NYU - who is incredibly sweet, even if she is giving Rachel terrible news - tells her that they've already met their transfer numbers for fall semester, but Rachel can get herself on a wait list on the off chance that a slot opens for her.
Of course, rather than just saying yes, Rachel asks what the chances of that actually happening are, and she gets precisely the answer that she's expecting: slim to none.
Rachel Berry has always been an optimist, has always been the one looking for the silver lining in every dark cloud because she truly believes that it's always there. Her father's death, no matter how hard it was on her, had a few different good things attached, the end of his pain being first and foremost in her mind. And yes, selfishly, she was aware that his death meant that she would get a chance to go to New York the way she was always supposed to.
Except now she's finding out that that isn't going to happen for at least another year, not if she actually wants to attend school, and she really isn't willing to move across the country without a solid foundation to build on once she gets there. Sure, she could throw herself into dance classes and singing lessons and going on auditions, but she thinks the life experience of college is important, especially for a girl like her, a girl who grew up in a small town and doesn't have a lot of experience to draw from to begin with.
It's the second time her dream has been dashed in a year, and it's like the universe is trying to take away her optimism in chips and chunks.
*
Rachel decides to spend summer in Lima even though she's keeping her apartment in Columbus for as long as she's going to school there. It sounds like most everyone is going to be home for the summer anyhow. Kurt is staying in New York (and she's stopped caring about him completely, which makes her a little sad), and she has no idea what's going on with Mercedes or Artie, but she thinks nearly everyone else she cares about is going to be back.
It's strange, living in the house with just Dad, and it only takes her a couple of days to decide this. It's quieter, and she'd never realized that Daddy was usually the one choosing the music they were listening to, that Daddy was the one who talked across the house instead of going to the room the the person he was talking to was in. The difference is so stark that the house might as well be silent.
Dad is quieter than he used to be anyhow, and he's definitely lost weight. (Not that she has any room to talk; one of the girls in dance class pointed out that Rachel has dropped more than a few pounds herself.) She's only ever known her father as a man in love, a man who has always been happy and optimistic like Rachel herself. His father died before Rachel was born, and other than acquaintances from temple and such, she's never seen grieve for anyone.
She walks into the kitchen on her first Saturday morning home, thinking about a glass of orange juice but trying to talk herself into brewing green tea instead. Dad is standing at the counter, measuring coffee grounds into the coffee maker. "Good morning," she greets, forcing herself to pick up the kettle from the stove and carry it to the sink. Orange juice is delicious and not exactly bad for her, but it's also full of sugar and calories she doesn't need. The green tea is all good things.
"Morning, angelfish."
She's sitting at the table, glancing at the front page of the newspaper while she waits for her tea to finish steeping when Dad takes his usual seat. She smiles, handing him the paper and pulling out the tea bag, setting it in the saucer before lifting the cup and blowing on the surface of the tea.
"You know how things always seem to taste better when someone else makes them?" he asks suddenly. She nods. Living alone this past year and preparing all of her own meals really drove that point home. He offers her a wry little smile. "Your daddy always made the coffee. Every morning of the twenty-five years we were together."
It takes her sleepy mind a moment to process, but when she realizes what he's saying, she thinks she can actually feel her heart break a little in her chest.
*
Now that school's out and the guy isn't obsessing over every single lecture and assignment and exam, Sam's back to being himself again, which Puck fucking loves. Finn's home, and Chang's spending the summer in Lima even though Puck can't figure out why the fuck he'd leave New York to come back to this place. But basically, the four of them fuck around all the time, and it's kind of like last summer, except better because their parents have all relaxed after a year of them being away all the time.
Santana's parents go on a cruise at the beginning of July. They're going to be gone for two weeks, and Dr. Lopez isn't stupid, because he makes a point of telling Santana that anything that comes up broken or missing is going to be her responsibility to replace. So, yeah, she throws a party.
Puck's sitting on the edge of the pool with his feet dangling in the water, talking to Brittany and Chang when Rachel comes out of the back of the house with Santana. She's wearing a denim skirt with her black bikini top, carrying one of those fruity, chick beer things, Bacardi or Smirnoff or whatever.
"How is she?" Mike asks when he follows Puck's gaze. She leaned against the deck railing, laughing at something Santana just said.
"She look sad," Brittany offers before Puck can say anything. He and Mike both blink at her, and she shrugs one shoulder. "Her eyes aren't smiling even though her mouth is."
Puck doesn't really know what to say to that, except he knows that Britt's right. He lets it sink in for a minute, then leans over to kiss her temple before tugging her with him when he slides down into the water.
*
Santana and Rachel go shopping one afternoon. It's hot outside, so they're taking advantage of the mall's air conditioning, and Rachel wants a few more pairs of jeans. See, walking around in skirts and tights all winter makes sense when you're in high school and spend your entire day in the same building, but it's far less practical when you're walking around campus all day, something she learned pretty quickly last year. She updated her wardrobe accordingly, but you can never have too much denim, and you can never have too many summer dresses, which are everywhere right now, too. She figures she'll get a couple of dresses, a pair of dark, skinny jeans that are missing from her wardrobe, and maybe a new pair of cute little gladiator sandals if she can find them.
But after nearly two hours and six stores, the only things Rachel has are a new bra and panty set that was on sale at Victoria's Secret and one red cotton sun dress Santana insisted looked lovely ('hot') against her skin. She's flicked through what feels like hundreds of racks of dresses and tried on at least a dozen pairs of jeans, all to no avail. It's frustrating.
She and Santana are sharing a fitting room at Macy's when she pulls on what must be her fourteenth pair of jeans that don't fit properly. She looks over at Santana, who is looking at her backside in the mirror, admiring the fit of the black slacks she's trying on and talking about where they should go next, and Rachel feels her body go hot all over. She unbuttons the jeans she's wearing with shaking fingers, pushes them down off her hips, and nearly falls over in her hurry to step out of the legs. She kicks the fabric away from her feet and snatches her skirt from the bench along the wall.
Santana looks at her strangely when she pulls the skirt up over her hips. "What's your damage, Rachel?"
She lowers her head to watch her hands as she buttons the skirt, and she's completely startled when a tear slips down her cheek, falling down to splash on top of her bare foot. "I'm done shopping," she manages, swallowing back the lump that's rising in her throat.
"Are you crying?" Santana asks incredulously.
"I'm fine." The words come out on a sob, and she knows it completely negates their meaning.
Santana mutters something under her breath when Rachel sobs a second time, shoves the pile of clothes they brought into the dressing room to the floor, and pushes her to sit on the bench. "They're just fucking jeans, Rachel."
"It's not about jeans," she manages, even though now she's crying in earnest, the sobs shaking her body.
"Then what the hell?"
Rachel tries to answer, but the words stick in her throat. Her hands are still shaking, and the tiny room feels too small and too hot. She can feel the tears streaming down her cheeks as she struggles to say something.
Santana bites out a curse, puts her hand on the back of Rachel's head, and pushes it down between her knees, then starts moving around the little room, changing back into her own clothes.
Rachel knows exactly what's going on here, with her head between her knees and a cold sweat breaking out on the back of her neck. She's watched enough television shows and had enough therapy to recognize an anxiety attack when she sees one. She's completely mortified that she's behaving like this in a dressing room in Macy's, of all places, with Santana Lopez, of all people.
She vaguely registers that Santana's on the phone with someone, telling whoever it is to meet them at the flagship's entrance, then Santana is wrapping her hand around Rachel's upper arm, squeezing almost too tight as she pulls her to her feet and pushes her out the dressing room door. Santana leads her through the store with an iron grip, not stopping until they're outside in the humid air and Rachel is sitting on a concrete bench next to one of those disgusting stone ash trays, overflowing with cigarette butts and chewed gum.
Santana puts both her hands on Rachel's shoulders and faces her. "What's wrong?" she asks firmly.
Rachel sucks in a deep, shaky breath. "I think--" She draws in another gasping breath and reminds herself that she can, in fact, breathe. "I think it's some sort of panic attack."
"Well, no shit," Santana says, rolling her eyes, but there isn't any animosity there.
Rachel's surprised when Finn's truck pulls up to the curb, but even though the sobs have diminished, she's still crying and breathing strangely, so she doesn't say anything. Santana pushes her into the truck, and Finn regards her tear-stained face with wide eyes. "I don't know what to do with that," Santana tells him flatly.
"Go home, Santana." The girl drops Rachel's purse and shopping bags at her feet in the floorboard, then slams the door closed. Finn lets out a sigh, leans over, and pulls open the glove box to take out a handful of McDonald's napkins. "Put on your seat belt, Rachel," he tells her quietly, setting the napkins in her lap.
She concentrates on regulating her breathing while he drives - in for eight counts, out for eight counts - and does her best to keep her mind blank, dabbing at her cheeks with the napkins.
She lets Finn lead her into her house, which is empty and cool and quiet, and up the stairs to her bedroom, where he pushes her to sit on the bench at the end of her bed. He looks at her for a second, then lets out a sigh. "You wanna tell me what's going on?"
She takes a deep breath. "The jeans didn't fit, and I just lost it."
"You're not crying about a pair of jeans, Rachel," he says, just the tiniest hint of uncertainly in his voice, like maybe it is about the jeans and he's just missing something.
"No."
"Then what is it?"
She shakes her head a little, brings her hands up to wipe just beneath her eyes with the pads of her fingers, and exhales slowly. "I haven't cried since my dad died," she whispers, not quite meeting his eyes. "I think it all came out at once, over something really stupid."
"The jeans." She can see the understanding light up his eyes.
"The jeans," she agrees with a little laugh.
He takes her hand in his, runs his fingertips up the inside of her forearm the way he always used to. "Why haven't you cried?" he asks gently.
She doesn't have to think about the question. She's been asking herself for more than a year. With everything that she watched Daddy go through, the only time that she actually cried for him was the very first night she found out that he was sick, when she was with Noah. And she's cried about other things, which maybe makes it all the more absurd. She's shed tears for New York and what might have been. She cried when she saw a baby panda that was orphaned at some Chinese zoo on Good Morning America. Just last week, she cried over an old rerun of One Tree Hill on SoapNet. But she knows exactly why she's been keeping it in when it comes to Daddy.
"I feel like I have to be strong about it," she tells him quietly. "It's just me and Dad, and I can tell how depressed he is, how much he misses Daddy. I don't know what happens if I let myself fall apart, too. If I can't take care of him," she explains.
"Rach, your dad can take care of himself," he tells her gently. "And he'll have to when you go back to school."
"I know." And she does, really, but still, it doesn't make her feel better about any of it.
Finn squeezes her hand until she looks up at him. "He's always going to be sad about it. Mom and Burt have been married for almost three years, and my dad was gone for a long time before that, and she still gets sad about him sometimes."
"That's not really making me feel better," she admits.
He shrugs. "It's not really supposed to. It is what it is, and there's not anything you can do about it."
She nods after a moment and lets out a breath. "Thank you," she finally says. "For coming and getting me."
"Santana doesn't really do tears, I guess."
Rachel can't really blame Santana for not knowing what to do with her, considering that she basically lost her mind when she was half-naked in a department store fitting room.
"Do you want to stay and find something completely meaningless to watch on television?"
He's laughing when he nods, and he ends up spending the entire evening at the house, watching the Three Stooges on DVD and having dinner with her and her dad. It's so comfortable, just like it was when they were together in high school, before they let their potential futures come between them and push them apart. She realizes, listening to him chuckle at something Dad said, just how much she's missed him over the last year or so, and even if what happened this afternoon was overwrought, she's glad that this is how she ended the day.
*
Brittany throws herself a going away party the weekend before she leaves for Chicago, and it's kind of weird. All the old glee club members are there, the ones who graduated last year like Brittany was supposed to, but so are a bunch of the younger kids they left behind, plus all the Cheerios and whoever else the girl spent the last year hanging out with since Santana and Quinn and Artie were all gone.
Puck's standing in the back yard with Santana, talking about their moving plans (because they're living together this year, which will either end up being awesome or the worst idea they've ever had) and drinking a beer when Rachel and Finn come walking out the back door holding hands.
"When did that happen?" he asks Santana, nodding at the two of them.
She turns and watches Finn open some Smirnoff chick beer thing for Rachel, grinning when he hands it to her. "I don't know. Probably after that day at the mall."
"What day at the mall?"
"She had like, a nervous breakdown in the middle of a dressing room in Macy's." She pauses to take a drink of her beer. "I didn't know what the fuck to do, so I called Finn to come and take care of her."
"Why did you call Finn?" he asks. Puck's always been Santana's go-to guy for shit that she couldn't handle, from guys who couldn't take a hint and fuck off to when she was trying to decide if she was just into girls or if she was into guys too, back in high school. It's just weird that she wouldn't call him for this, too.
She shrugs and takes another sip of her drink. "I guess I got in the habit of calling him when we were fucking around." Her face is completely blank, and he knows exactly what that means: There's more to what she's saying, but there's no way she's going to tell him anything else.
He watches Rachel stand up on her tiptoes to whisper something in Finn's ear, and they're both laughing when she pulls away. "Five months."
Santana shakes her head. "Three."
Chapter: 6/17
Rating: R
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Word Count: 5,230
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 has never really understood the concept of taking food to the relatives of the deceased, but it seems that that's the way it goes. It's just that it feels so wasteful. She's forced to start storing things in the refrigerator in the garage when the one in the kitchen is full. Scalloped potatoes, watergate salad, three different noodle kugels, cheesecake, zucchini bread, and even an entire brisket from Mrs. Sherman at temple, a woman who doesn't know the meaning of moderation if her own girth is any indication. And while Rachel knows that the majority of those from temple who are bringing food are completely aware of her veganism, she also knows that that there's this strange resistance to her dietary choices, and, as a result, very little of the food being brought to the house is anything that she would ever consider eating.
Of course, her choosing not to eat the things that aren't vegan isn't much different than her inability to eat much of anything that is, and Dad doesn't have much of an appetite either.
Daddy made all of the arrangements for what was supposed to happen after his death, which she supposes is the only benefit of dying the way that he did; he had the time and the ability to ensure that things happen the way he wanted them to. He's being cremated, so there won't be a traditional funeral, though they are holding a wake at the house.
The only positive outcome Rachel can see, as the day approaches, is that maybe the guests will get rid of some of this food.
*
Puck agrees to go to Andrew's wake with his mom because Abby's at school, and even though he'd originally planned to go with Finn and Santana (Sam has an exam he can't get out of, so he isn't coming), he's not going to make his mom go alone. The woman badgers him about not wearing a tie, so he takes the food containers she's carrying to shut her up.
It doesn't work, but whatever.
The Berrys' street is totally lined with cars, which doesn't surprise Puck at all. There are people in Lima who will never accept a gay couple, and Rachel wasn't always popular with kids her own age, but for the most part, the Berrys are pretty well-liked. And it always seems like when someone who isn't a senior citizen dies, people really come out of the woodwork to talk about how it's so sad and such a tragedy.
His mom goes to talk to her group of gossipy ladies from temple as soon as they walk through the door, and Puck heads back to the kitchen to drop the stuff he's carrying. Rachel's standing there talking to Santana, and Finn's with them, a plate in his hand while he shovels food into his mouth. She's wearing a navy blue dress that he thinks is silk, and her hair is pulled back away from her face so he can really see how tired she looks.
"Oh, good," she says when she sees him. "More food." She glances pointedly around the kitchen, where he can see that both the big center island and the table are covered with half-full dishes of basically anything you could ever want, plus plenty of stuff he'd never touch.
"Yeah, well, you know my mom," he offers, pushing some things aside so he can set down the containers he's carrying. "It's some lentil thing and blueberry lemon muffins. Mom found the recipes on some vegan website," he tells her, partially because he thinks she'd want to know, but mostly because his mom told him to make sure he mentioned it.
Rachel's face sort of falls, but then she says, "That's so nice," and he's kind of confused. "Most people haven't even bothered." She looks around the kitchen again, her eyes lingering on Finn for a moment. "Not that most of it will get eaten anyhow."
Noah doesn't say anything, and Rachel supposes that makes sense. What exactly is he supposed to say to that? But honestly, Marlene Puckerman is just about her favorite person in the world right now.
"I'm going to go thank your mother," she says after a moment. "Eat something. Please."
She needs to stop hiding in the kitchen anyhow. Sure, people have been in and out, dropping off food (food she's already planning on taking to the women's shelter) and making plates to eat in the dining room, but she's the hostess and she needs to take care of her guests.
Whose bright idea was it to make the family of the deceased host everyone they know anyway?
She finds Marlene talking to Mrs. Sherman, and even though it's impolite, she injects herself into their conversation. "Thank you so much for making the effort to prepare vegan recipes for me," she says, keeping her voice sweet. "It's so thoughtful, and it seems that most people can't be bothered."
Mrs. Sherman excuses herself with a huff, and Rachel manages to hold in her eye roll until the woman is out of sight. "I think I hate her."
Marlene lets out a little snort of laughter. "She's a shrew."
She almost manages a smile. "I really do appreciate it though. The food," she clarifies. "It means a lot that you would make the effort for me."
"Of course, sweetheart." Marlene looks at her for a moment, her gaze sweeping over Rachel's body. "How are you?"
Rachel considers the question carefully, because she thinks it's the first time she's been asked today by someone who really meant it, save Santana. (Who accepted it easily when Rachel told her that she didn't know how she was.) Everyone else asked it as a cursory question, something they had to say before they got to whatever it was they wanted to say, whatever vapid, useless thing they wanted to tell her about her father. It kills her how everyone wants to talk about him like they knew him better than she did; he's her daddy.
"I'm fine, I guess," she says after a long moment, shrugging one shoulder. "I've never been this sad, but I'm not about to fall to pieces, so I suppose that means I'm fine."
"You let me know if you need anything, do you hear me?" Rachel nods, finds herself being pulled into a tight hug. "I mean that, Rachel."
"I know," she tells Marlene seriously when she pulls away. She really does, and not just because the woman has told her that repeatedly. She can feel how much Marlene means it when she says it, and she genuinely appreciates it, even if she has no intention of actually asking the woman for anything.
The house is crowded with people until nearly six p.m., and Rachel locks the door behind the last one, flicking off the porch light when she does. Honestly, it's more symbolic than anything, given that the sun hasn't set yet, but it makes her feel better. Turning off the porch light is the subtle 'stay away' signal that she just needs to put out into the world right now.
Mrs. Simon from next door helped Nana cleaning up the kitchen when guests started trickling out, and Rachel makes a mental note to send her a thank you when she walks into the nearly-spotless room. Nana is loading the dishwasher, and Dad is sitting at the table, picking at a plate of food that Nana has obviously made for him, going by the size of it.
"You should eat something, angelfish," he tells her when she sits across from him.
She shakes her head. "I'm not hungry." She hasn't eaten since breakfast, but the thought of eating anything makes her stomach roll. The sheer volume of food that has passed through her home - that is still in her home - makes her queasy. Besides that, she hasn't had much of an appetite all weekend.
"Nonsense," Nana says. "At least have one of those muffins Mrs. Puckerman brought."
"Fine," she agrees, not wanting to fight with her grandmother. And she keeps her mouth shut when, minutes later, the plate set in front of her has two muffins, warmed and split and smeared with a touch of margarine, and is accompanied by a glass of soy milk. "I think I'll just take this upstairs and eat it while I change."
Nana sets her hands on her hips. "I expect and empty plate and glass, Rachel Barbra."
"Yes, ma'am," she agrees with a little smile.
She leaves the plate on her dresser, but carries the glass into the bathroom and pours the contents down the drain immediately because she knows the soy milk won't sit well on her empty stomach, however well-meaning her grandmother is. She changes into a pair of sweats and a tee shirt, and she manages to eat half of one of the muffins before it starts making her feel queasy.
Because she hates to make her father or her grandmother worry even under the best of circumstances, and this certainly isn't that, she pushes open her window and crumbles the rest of the muffins onto the shingles of the porch roof for the birds so the food doesn't go completely to waste.
She falls asleep just after seven, curled up on the bed with Rock the way she has all weekend, an episode of Gossip Girl playing and the lights still burning.
*
He's sitting in the dining hall with Mia one night, eating way more french fries than he probably should because that salisbury steak shit they're serving is terrible. They're talking about their plans for the four-day Easter weekend, and while Puck isn't doing anything, Mia's family apparently takes the holiday pretty seriously. She has a bunch of little cousins, so they have dinner and an Easter egg hunt that actually sounds like a lot of fun, even if it's not a holiday Puck gives a fuck about.
"My grandma always uses it as an opportunity to ask about my love life," she says, reaching over the steal a fry from his plate. He raises an eyebrow. "What do you think I should tell her this year?"
They've never talked about this thing they're doing, with the exception of once way back at the beginning, when she told him that she wasn't going to fuck him if he was planning on fucking around with other girls. Mia isn't a girl who plays games, so that's not what this is. She's just asking, which is actually pretty cute.
He shrugs one shoulder and takes a drink of his Coke. "You could tell her about your hot ass boyfriend, but since it's Easter and whatever, you should probably leave out the fact that he thinks all the Jesus stuff is mostly bullshit."
Mia laughs because she isn't religious, not really (they've talked about it), and besides that, she's used to him. "Yeah, I'll be sure to leave that part out."
And just like that, Puck ends up with a girlfriend his freshman year of college, and even though he really never wanted it, he's not mad that he has it now.
*
It turns out that if you want to transfer to a school in New York, the city that everyone wants to be in, you need to start getting yourself together almost a year in advance. At least, that's what Rachel learns when she starts making calls to NYU towards the end of April, once she's back at OSU and back in the swing of things, so to speak. In any case, she's attending all of her classes and completing her assignments, and she's back in dance classes even if she feels like she's simply going through the motions.
The woman on the phone from NYU - who is incredibly sweet, even if she is giving Rachel terrible news - tells her that they've already met their transfer numbers for fall semester, but Rachel can get herself on a wait list on the off chance that a slot opens for her.
Of course, rather than just saying yes, Rachel asks what the chances of that actually happening are, and she gets precisely the answer that she's expecting: slim to none.
Rachel Berry has always been an optimist, has always been the one looking for the silver lining in every dark cloud because she truly believes that it's always there. Her father's death, no matter how hard it was on her, had a few different good things attached, the end of his pain being first and foremost in her mind. And yes, selfishly, she was aware that his death meant that she would get a chance to go to New York the way she was always supposed to.
Except now she's finding out that that isn't going to happen for at least another year, not if she actually wants to attend school, and she really isn't willing to move across the country without a solid foundation to build on once she gets there. Sure, she could throw herself into dance classes and singing lessons and going on auditions, but she thinks the life experience of college is important, especially for a girl like her, a girl who grew up in a small town and doesn't have a lot of experience to draw from to begin with.
It's the second time her dream has been dashed in a year, and it's like the universe is trying to take away her optimism in chips and chunks.
*
Rachel decides to spend summer in Lima even though she's keeping her apartment in Columbus for as long as she's going to school there. It sounds like most everyone is going to be home for the summer anyhow. Kurt is staying in New York (and she's stopped caring about him completely, which makes her a little sad), and she has no idea what's going on with Mercedes or Artie, but she thinks nearly everyone else she cares about is going to be back.
It's strange, living in the house with just Dad, and it only takes her a couple of days to decide this. It's quieter, and she'd never realized that Daddy was usually the one choosing the music they were listening to, that Daddy was the one who talked across the house instead of going to the room the the person he was talking to was in. The difference is so stark that the house might as well be silent.
Dad is quieter than he used to be anyhow, and he's definitely lost weight. (Not that she has any room to talk; one of the girls in dance class pointed out that Rachel has dropped more than a few pounds herself.) She's only ever known her father as a man in love, a man who has always been happy and optimistic like Rachel herself. His father died before Rachel was born, and other than acquaintances from temple and such, she's never seen grieve for anyone.
She walks into the kitchen on her first Saturday morning home, thinking about a glass of orange juice but trying to talk herself into brewing green tea instead. Dad is standing at the counter, measuring coffee grounds into the coffee maker. "Good morning," she greets, forcing herself to pick up the kettle from the stove and carry it to the sink. Orange juice is delicious and not exactly bad for her, but it's also full of sugar and calories she doesn't need. The green tea is all good things.
"Morning, angelfish."
She's sitting at the table, glancing at the front page of the newspaper while she waits for her tea to finish steeping when Dad takes his usual seat. She smiles, handing him the paper and pulling out the tea bag, setting it in the saucer before lifting the cup and blowing on the surface of the tea.
"You know how things always seem to taste better when someone else makes them?" he asks suddenly. She nods. Living alone this past year and preparing all of her own meals really drove that point home. He offers her a wry little smile. "Your daddy always made the coffee. Every morning of the twenty-five years we were together."
It takes her sleepy mind a moment to process, but when she realizes what he's saying, she thinks she can actually feel her heart break a little in her chest.
*
Now that school's out and the guy isn't obsessing over every single lecture and assignment and exam, Sam's back to being himself again, which Puck fucking loves. Finn's home, and Chang's spending the summer in Lima even though Puck can't figure out why the fuck he'd leave New York to come back to this place. But basically, the four of them fuck around all the time, and it's kind of like last summer, except better because their parents have all relaxed after a year of them being away all the time.
Santana's parents go on a cruise at the beginning of July. They're going to be gone for two weeks, and Dr. Lopez isn't stupid, because he makes a point of telling Santana that anything that comes up broken or missing is going to be her responsibility to replace. So, yeah, she throws a party.
Puck's sitting on the edge of the pool with his feet dangling in the water, talking to Brittany and Chang when Rachel comes out of the back of the house with Santana. She's wearing a denim skirt with her black bikini top, carrying one of those fruity, chick beer things, Bacardi or Smirnoff or whatever.
"How is she?" Mike asks when he follows Puck's gaze. She leaned against the deck railing, laughing at something Santana just said.
"She look sad," Brittany offers before Puck can say anything. He and Mike both blink at her, and she shrugs one shoulder. "Her eyes aren't smiling even though her mouth is."
Puck doesn't really know what to say to that, except he knows that Britt's right. He lets it sink in for a minute, then leans over to kiss her temple before tugging her with him when he slides down into the water.
*
Santana and Rachel go shopping one afternoon. It's hot outside, so they're taking advantage of the mall's air conditioning, and Rachel wants a few more pairs of jeans. See, walking around in skirts and tights all winter makes sense when you're in high school and spend your entire day in the same building, but it's far less practical when you're walking around campus all day, something she learned pretty quickly last year. She updated her wardrobe accordingly, but you can never have too much denim, and you can never have too many summer dresses, which are everywhere right now, too. She figures she'll get a couple of dresses, a pair of dark, skinny jeans that are missing from her wardrobe, and maybe a new pair of cute little gladiator sandals if she can find them.
But after nearly two hours and six stores, the only things Rachel has are a new bra and panty set that was on sale at Victoria's Secret and one red cotton sun dress Santana insisted looked lovely ('hot') against her skin. She's flicked through what feels like hundreds of racks of dresses and tried on at least a dozen pairs of jeans, all to no avail. It's frustrating.
She and Santana are sharing a fitting room at Macy's when she pulls on what must be her fourteenth pair of jeans that don't fit properly. She looks over at Santana, who is looking at her backside in the mirror, admiring the fit of the black slacks she's trying on and talking about where they should go next, and Rachel feels her body go hot all over. She unbuttons the jeans she's wearing with shaking fingers, pushes them down off her hips, and nearly falls over in her hurry to step out of the legs. She kicks the fabric away from her feet and snatches her skirt from the bench along the wall.
Santana looks at her strangely when she pulls the skirt up over her hips. "What's your damage, Rachel?"
She lowers her head to watch her hands as she buttons the skirt, and she's completely startled when a tear slips down her cheek, falling down to splash on top of her bare foot. "I'm done shopping," she manages, swallowing back the lump that's rising in her throat.
"Are you crying?" Santana asks incredulously.
"I'm fine." The words come out on a sob, and she knows it completely negates their meaning.
Santana mutters something under her breath when Rachel sobs a second time, shoves the pile of clothes they brought into the dressing room to the floor, and pushes her to sit on the bench. "They're just fucking jeans, Rachel."
"It's not about jeans," she manages, even though now she's crying in earnest, the sobs shaking her body.
"Then what the hell?"
Rachel tries to answer, but the words stick in her throat. Her hands are still shaking, and the tiny room feels too small and too hot. She can feel the tears streaming down her cheeks as she struggles to say something.
Santana bites out a curse, puts her hand on the back of Rachel's head, and pushes it down between her knees, then starts moving around the little room, changing back into her own clothes.
Rachel knows exactly what's going on here, with her head between her knees and a cold sweat breaking out on the back of her neck. She's watched enough television shows and had enough therapy to recognize an anxiety attack when she sees one. She's completely mortified that she's behaving like this in a dressing room in Macy's, of all places, with Santana Lopez, of all people.
She vaguely registers that Santana's on the phone with someone, telling whoever it is to meet them at the flagship's entrance, then Santana is wrapping her hand around Rachel's upper arm, squeezing almost too tight as she pulls her to her feet and pushes her out the dressing room door. Santana leads her through the store with an iron grip, not stopping until they're outside in the humid air and Rachel is sitting on a concrete bench next to one of those disgusting stone ash trays, overflowing with cigarette butts and chewed gum.
Santana puts both her hands on Rachel's shoulders and faces her. "What's wrong?" she asks firmly.
Rachel sucks in a deep, shaky breath. "I think--" She draws in another gasping breath and reminds herself that she can, in fact, breathe. "I think it's some sort of panic attack."
"Well, no shit," Santana says, rolling her eyes, but there isn't any animosity there.
Rachel's surprised when Finn's truck pulls up to the curb, but even though the sobs have diminished, she's still crying and breathing strangely, so she doesn't say anything. Santana pushes her into the truck, and Finn regards her tear-stained face with wide eyes. "I don't know what to do with that," Santana tells him flatly.
"Go home, Santana." The girl drops Rachel's purse and shopping bags at her feet in the floorboard, then slams the door closed. Finn lets out a sigh, leans over, and pulls open the glove box to take out a handful of McDonald's napkins. "Put on your seat belt, Rachel," he tells her quietly, setting the napkins in her lap.
She concentrates on regulating her breathing while he drives - in for eight counts, out for eight counts - and does her best to keep her mind blank, dabbing at her cheeks with the napkins.
She lets Finn lead her into her house, which is empty and cool and quiet, and up the stairs to her bedroom, where he pushes her to sit on the bench at the end of her bed. He looks at her for a second, then lets out a sigh. "You wanna tell me what's going on?"
She takes a deep breath. "The jeans didn't fit, and I just lost it."
"You're not crying about a pair of jeans, Rachel," he says, just the tiniest hint of uncertainly in his voice, like maybe it is about the jeans and he's just missing something.
"No."
"Then what is it?"
She shakes her head a little, brings her hands up to wipe just beneath her eyes with the pads of her fingers, and exhales slowly. "I haven't cried since my dad died," she whispers, not quite meeting his eyes. "I think it all came out at once, over something really stupid."
"The jeans." She can see the understanding light up his eyes.
"The jeans," she agrees with a little laugh.
He takes her hand in his, runs his fingertips up the inside of her forearm the way he always used to. "Why haven't you cried?" he asks gently.
She doesn't have to think about the question. She's been asking herself for more than a year. With everything that she watched Daddy go through, the only time that she actually cried for him was the very first night she found out that he was sick, when she was with Noah. And she's cried about other things, which maybe makes it all the more absurd. She's shed tears for New York and what might have been. She cried when she saw a baby panda that was orphaned at some Chinese zoo on Good Morning America. Just last week, she cried over an old rerun of One Tree Hill on SoapNet. But she knows exactly why she's been keeping it in when it comes to Daddy.
"I feel like I have to be strong about it," she tells him quietly. "It's just me and Dad, and I can tell how depressed he is, how much he misses Daddy. I don't know what happens if I let myself fall apart, too. If I can't take care of him," she explains.
"Rach, your dad can take care of himself," he tells her gently. "And he'll have to when you go back to school."
"I know." And she does, really, but still, it doesn't make her feel better about any of it.
Finn squeezes her hand until she looks up at him. "He's always going to be sad about it. Mom and Burt have been married for almost three years, and my dad was gone for a long time before that, and she still gets sad about him sometimes."
"That's not really making me feel better," she admits.
He shrugs. "It's not really supposed to. It is what it is, and there's not anything you can do about it."
She nods after a moment and lets out a breath. "Thank you," she finally says. "For coming and getting me."
"Santana doesn't really do tears, I guess."
Rachel can't really blame Santana for not knowing what to do with her, considering that she basically lost her mind when she was half-naked in a department store fitting room.
"Do you want to stay and find something completely meaningless to watch on television?"
He's laughing when he nods, and he ends up spending the entire evening at the house, watching the Three Stooges on DVD and having dinner with her and her dad. It's so comfortable, just like it was when they were together in high school, before they let their potential futures come between them and push them apart. She realizes, listening to him chuckle at something Dad said, just how much she's missed him over the last year or so, and even if what happened this afternoon was overwrought, she's glad that this is how she ended the day.
*
Brittany throws herself a going away party the weekend before she leaves for Chicago, and it's kind of weird. All the old glee club members are there, the ones who graduated last year like Brittany was supposed to, but so are a bunch of the younger kids they left behind, plus all the Cheerios and whoever else the girl spent the last year hanging out with since Santana and Quinn and Artie were all gone.
Puck's standing in the back yard with Santana, talking about their moving plans (because they're living together this year, which will either end up being awesome or the worst idea they've ever had) and drinking a beer when Rachel and Finn come walking out the back door holding hands.
"When did that happen?" he asks Santana, nodding at the two of them.
She turns and watches Finn open some Smirnoff chick beer thing for Rachel, grinning when he hands it to her. "I don't know. Probably after that day at the mall."
"What day at the mall?"
"She had like, a nervous breakdown in the middle of a dressing room in Macy's." She pauses to take a drink of her beer. "I didn't know what the fuck to do, so I called Finn to come and take care of her."
"Why did you call Finn?" he asks. Puck's always been Santana's go-to guy for shit that she couldn't handle, from guys who couldn't take a hint and fuck off to when she was trying to decide if she was just into girls or if she was into guys too, back in high school. It's just weird that she wouldn't call him for this, too.
She shrugs and takes another sip of her drink. "I guess I got in the habit of calling him when we were fucking around." Her face is completely blank, and he knows exactly what that means: There's more to what she's saying, but there's no way she's going to tell him anything else.
He watches Rachel stand up on her tiptoes to whisper something in Finn's ear, and they're both laughing when she pulls away. "Five months."
Santana shakes her head. "Three."