That the Moon Elbowed the Stars 8/17
Title: That the Moon Elbowed the Stars
Chapter: 8/17
Rating: R
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Word Count: 6,600
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 spends most of November dreading Thanksgiving, and why shouldn't she after how terribly it went last year? Besides that, this is the first real holiday she's celebrated since Daddy died, and none of them are ever going to be the same again. This is just the beginning. After Thanksgiving, there's Hanukkah and her birthday and Christmas, a holiday that she shared with Daddy more than anyone else.
This has always been her favorite time of year. It's all cashmere and twinkle lights and nutmeg and snowflakes, and none of it's ever going to be the same. She hates that it's been ruined for her.
This year, Aunt Donna and Uncle Jake are hosting the Thanksgiving festivities, which is really just icing on the cake. Rachel can't stand that woman, and it's significantly harder to get away from someone when you're a guest in her house.
Rachel spends Wednesday night baking an apple pie, which she has no intention of eating, and putting together a couple of dishes for herself so she doesn't go hungry when Aunt Donna insists that she 'forgot' Rachel's veganism and, 'why don't you just try a bit of this macaroni and cheese, hon?'
She and Dad get up early to go to Cleveland, stopping at Starbucks for pumpkin spice lattes and playing songs from their favorite musicals for the drive. It all feels almost normal, except for the fact that Daddy's supposed to be sitting here in the front seat instead of her, complimenting his family for their musical taste but suggesting, as tactfully as he could manage, that perhaps they could try listening to something else for just a bit. (He always appreciated the theater, and he absolutely supported Rachel's aspirations, but he liked to take a break for something a bit more mainstream after a while.)
When that thought occurs to her, Rachel pushes it away and switches ahead to "Popular" in the playlist they're listening to. It isn't her favorite song from Wicked, obviously, but it's about as far away from what's going on in her head as she can get.
In an effort to avoid family dramatics, Rachel spends the time before dinner is ready sitting in the basement with Uncle Jake and her cousins, Clayton and Dalton, watching the football game. There aren't many things she cares less about than professional football, but it's better than avoiding concerned looks and passive-aggressive comments from her aunt.
No, she gets to wait until she's politely turning down mashed potatoes (loaded, she knows, with butter and cream) and Aunt Donna purses her lips.
"Rachel, I don't know how you survive on nothing but beans and vegetables," she says, putting a greasy-looking turkey drumstick on Dalton's plate before passing it back to him.
Rachel bites the inside of her cheek, but then it's like something boils over. "Well, if you would make any sort of effort to understand my decision instead of just criticizing it," she begins, setting her fork on her admittedly quite empty plate, "then perhaps you'd know that I do eat more than beans and vegetables. And for that matter, maybe you would make an effort to prepare something more substantial, and frankly, more festive for the holiday that I could actually eat."
Aunt Donna's mouth is in a perfect o when Rachel picks up her fork and spears a brussel sprout, and she catches a little smile on Nana's lips from the corner of her eye.
Her aunt is salty for the rest of the meal, but Rachel feels fantastic, honestly. She's been vegan since just after she turned sixteen, when she first watched Food, Inc. and started researching the diet in earnest. It's been nearly four years, and it feels good to finally say something so definitive to the woman who has, ridiculously, been her most vocal critic. She doesn't go out of her way to engage Aunt Donna in conversation for the rest of the meal, but she volunteers to to help with the dishes since the china has to be washed by hand and she didn't do any of the cooking.
She has her hands in the sink full of soapy water, and she's trying not to think about the bits of poor, sad birds that she just scraped into the trash can when Nana walks into the room and pulls a clean dish towel from the drawer next to the sink. "Those boys don't have any manners," she comments, drying one of the plates Rachel has stacked in the drain board.
Instead of saying anything, Rachel just offers her grandmother a little smirk. Clayton and Dalton don't have any manners because their mother babies them. She has literally never seen either of them even offer to wash a dish or help cook a single thing.
They work together in companionable silence for a few minutes, until Nana pulls Rachel out of her thoughts about how much she actually hates washing dishes by hand, saying, "David told me that you and your fellow called things off again." Rachel bites back the smile she feels threatening to come out. "You aren't getting any younger, bubbala."
"I'm not even twenty yet," she points out, rinsing the last bread plate. It's kind of wonderful, her grandmother bugging her about her love life and her hypothetical children (which she knows is coming). It's so normal.
"You've been saying for years that you want to be married and starting your family by the time you're twenty-five."
Rachel fights the urge to sigh. She meant that when she said it. Except now, it's so hard to even wrap her mind around building a family when the family she already knows has been torn apart.
"Things change," she says simply after a long moment, not quite meeting her grandmother's eyes. It's incredibly difficult to remember the last time she felt something more for a man than affection and perhaps sexual attraction. She loved Finn, yes, but she hasn't been stomach-full-of-butterflies in love since high school.
Nana takes the bread plate from Rachel's hand. "Make sure they don't change too much," she says gently.
She knows now that Nana isn't talking about men or children any more, but about her. "They won't," she promises in a whisper. And she means it. No matter what has happened in the last year and a half, she's going to have everything that she knows she's meant to have. She's going to New York, to Broadway. She's going to be a star.
She still believes that she can have it all.
*
Puck makes mistakes.
A lot of them. He always has.
The first time he remembers screwing up, he was six and playing in Ryan Baldwin's back yard next door to Puck's own house. He knew he was supposed to stay outside where his mom could look out the kitchen window and past the lilac bush to see him, but Ryan had just gotten the new NASCAR game for PlayStation, and he was just going to watch one quick lap at Daytona before he came back out. His mom was never supposed to notice. Except Ryan handed him the controller and told him he could try, and they'd been inside for nearly half an hour when Puck came back out. His mom wasn't in their house when he went to check, which freaked him the hell out. He went across the street to Mrs. Paxton's house just like he was supposed to in an emergency, because not being able to find your mom is definitely an emergency when you're six.
The old woman had hugged him so hard it hurt when she opened the door, and then she'd taken his hand and led him down the street where his mom was knocking on everyone's doors asking if they'd seen him. It turned out that she'd knocked at the Baldwins', but the boys were in the basement and Ryan's older brother was listening to music upstairs, so no one answered the door. She was super pissed that Puck had gone into the house at all, and he could see tears in her eyes before she pulled him into a tight hug. Then she'd wrapped her hand around his upper arm and marched him up the street, talking the whole time about how she was going to spank him as soon as they got to the house because he knew better, and 'you don't scare me like that ever again, Noah Daniel.'
He never did anything like that again. (And the craziest thing is, as clear as the memory of being marched up the street is, he doesn't remember being spanked at all. But fuck, he remembers the tone of his mom's voice when she told him what she was going to do to him when they got home.)
And that's the thing: Puck learns from his mistakes.
Yeah, fucking around with Quinn like he did was a huge fucking mistake, one that he didn't repeat. (Making out with Rachel when she was pissed off at Finn was not the same thing as sleeping with Quinn because she didn't have any self-esteem, and he never would have let things go that far with Rachel anyhow, whatever anyone else thinks.) He hasn't had sex without a condom even once since the day he heard that she was pregnant. He stopped with the real delinquency stuff after he got sent to juvie; the worst shit he's done since then is use a fake ID and roll through some stop signs. Mr. Schue caught him cheating on a Spanish test senior year, and even though the guy just gave him a zero without writing him up, Puck never did that again either.
So, now that he's done the relationship thing in college and gotten cheated on, he's not going to make that mistake again.
He and Santana throw a party at their place the weekend before classes start again in January, and it turns into kind of a clusterfuck. Finn invites a couple of his football friends, and Sam brings a couple of people he knows from the residence halls, and Santana seems to know fucking everyone. All Puck can hope is that no one calls the cops on them, because just about everyone is underage, and just about everyone is drunk.
Including Rachel.
He finds her in the kitchen when he's trying to get away from this girl he fucked back before winter break. She's sitting on the counter, sipping something from a red cup and looking dubiously at the guy talking to her, one of Finn's football friends. He walks over and leans against the counter next to where she's sitting. "'Sup, baby?" he greets. He catches the dirty look on the football guy's face out of the corner of his eye.
"Noah!" she exclaims, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. She's totally oblivious to the guy walking away, leaving them alone together. "I'm drunk."
He thinks it's kind of adorable how she always announces it, like he can't tell. Basically everything about her is adorable when she's drunk. "I see that."
She lifts an eyebrow and takes another sip of her drink. "Shouldn't you be pursuing a companion for the evening?" she asks.
"Nah." He takes her cup from her hand - she lets him - and takes a little sip. "I got that shit locked down already."
She makes a face and takes her cup back. She hates the way Noah talks about sex sometimes, like it doesn't mean anything. She understands now that it doesn't always have to mean something, and she's certainly not the most experienced girl in the world (given that she's only been with one man), but she knows that sex with Finn was better when she was still in love with him. And maybe it doesn't always mean something emotionally, but that doesn't mean that sex doesn't mean something every time.
She's drunk and she isn't making sense in her own head.
"Does that mean you've found a new friend?" she asks, emphasizing the last word. Puck rolls his eyes.
"No, I don't have a fuck buddy." He doesn't want to commit to just one girl for anything, if he's being honest. Like, he's not the same guy he was when he was sixteen, and it's about more than getting what he wants, but he'd like to have that mutual satisfaction thing going on with more than one girl, that's all. He keeps all of that to himself though.
"What do you think are the chances that Santana isn't going to have sex tonight?" she asks abruptly.
He blinks. "Zero."
She makes a face. She was hoping that maybe she could stay here, with Santana, instead of having to leave with Finn. She loves him to death for being her sober driver, but when she saw him about half an hour ago, she could tell that he was ready to leave. It's only a matter of time before he finds her and spoils her fun.
"You could stay in my bed," he offers, leering a little.
"I thought you already had a bed partner lined up."
He shrugs, leaning just a little closer to her. "I'd rather have you," he says, and maybe it's just a little bit too honest, but whatever. Vodka does stupid shit to his head.
Rachel just shakes her head, because she obviously thinks Puck's just fucking around. And yeah, he is. He and Rachel are just friends, and the fact that she's hot and he'd fucking love to know what she's like in bed isn't enough for him to ruin their friendship.
Apparently he's growing up.*
Rachel's checking her email on her phone when she's walking home from class on the day that she gets her transfer acceptance from NYU. Her steps falter, and she nearly gets plowed over by an overweight boy in a green sweatshirt, but she's so excited that she doesn't care, doesn't really even register the affront that would usually leave her all sorts of indignant.
She also doesn't care about the strange looks she gets when she lets out a little squeal and bounces on the balls of her feet a little as she rereads the email.
She calls Dad at work to share the news. "I'm going to NYU!" They're words that she's said before, meant before, but this time, it's different. This time, only her own death is going to stop her.
"You got your acceptance! Oh, Rachel, honey, I'm so happy for you." He means it, and she knows that, and she loves him so, so much for it. Truthfully, she loves everything right now. "We can go apartment hunting when you're on spring break," he suggests, and they spend half an hour on the phone even though she knows that he should probably working, doing lawyerly things.
For nearly two years, New York has felt like this almost mythical thing to her, just beyond the grasp of her fingertips, and finally she's going to have it.
Santana insists on a night out when Rachel bursts into the house to tell them that she's finally going to New York. Puck wants to hang out with them, but he has a sociology test tomorrow afternoon, and he really needs to study for that. He hasn't quite picked a major yet, but he's into this sociology stuff, and he thinks he wants to minor in it, which means he needs a good grade in this class.
Noah sits on Santana's bed with his notes while they get ready, insisting that he won't actually be getting any studying done until they're out of the house, so he might as well get to hang out while they do the 'girly getting ready shit.'
"Could you help me?" she asks him, walking up next to where he's sitting on the bed. She went into the bathroom to change out of her jeans into this dress with the little cap sleeves, and normally she has no problem dressing herself, no matter the placement or style of the closure, but the zipper keeps catching at the seam that creates the waist of this dress. She could make it work, certainly, but he's just sitting there, so he might as well help.
She pulls her hair over her shoulder when he nods, turning so he can slide the zipper upwards. He makes a point of skimming the backs of his fingers over the bare skin between her shoulder blades, even though it's completely unnecessary, then pulls the zipper up easily. "It looks better on you than Santana," he tells her when she thanks him. He knows she borrowed the dress, and he thinks he likes it on Rachel because her tits aren't spilling out the top of it. (And yeah, it's weird that he likes it better this way, but whatever.)
It makes her cheeks feel a little warm when he compliments her, and she thinks she can still feel his fingertips against her skin. "Thank you."
They go to a club that's having a ladies' night, and Santana basically spends all of the time that they're not dancing sweet talking men into buying them drinks. "We're celebrating her move to New York," she tells them, biting her lip just a little. "Even if she is leaving me behind to do it."
It's almost sad how many men fall for it, this subtle and completely false allusion to their lesbian relationship, except it's getting Rachel excessive amounts of free alcohol, which most definitely is not sad.
About half an hour before last call, Santana runs into a boy from one of her business classes, and even drunk, Rachel can tell that her friend is going home with this boy the moment she sees them together.
"It's fine," she insists when Santana drags her to the bathroom to ask if she minds. "I just sent Noah a text, so he'll be here soon." She meets Santana's eyes in the mirror and bumps the girl's hip with her own. "Go have fun."
She's standing outside of the place when he pulls up to the curb, her arms crossed tightly over her chest because it's about forty degrees and she isn't wearing a coat. "Why do you wear a short-sleeved dress when it's this cold?" he asks when she closes the door behind her, reaching over to turn up the heat and point a vent at her.
She shakes her head, tugging the seat belt across her body. "It won't matter how many times I explain it to you, you'll never understand," she insists, fighting the shudder than want to run through her body and make her teeth chatter. "But alcohol helps." She's almost shivering, yes, but she doesn't really feel uncomfortable. She knows her feet are going to ache tomorrow, because they always do when she wears this particular pair of heels, but there's enough alcohol in her system that she can't really even feel her feet at all. It makes her nearly impervious to the cold as well.
Puck just shakes his head. She's right: He will never understand that shit.
"You should come up with me," she says when he pulls onto her street. She shrugs her shoulder when he looks over at her questioningly. "My zipper could get stuck again."
He ends up using his key to get into her apartment because hers is buried at the bottom of her little purse, not that he understands how anything gets buried in a purse that small. Seriously, growing up with women and living with one doesn't make all the mysteries go away.
She locks the door behind them out of habit, ignoring the amused little smirk on Noah's lips. "When is your test tomorrow?" she asks, dropping her bag and walking to the kitchen.
"One."
"You should just stay here," she suggests, reaching into her fridge for a bottle of Vitamin Water. She wonders how small her kitchen in New York will be, how spoiled she's been by this place. She doesn't care if she lives with a hot plate and a mini-fridge, it'll be perfect.
"Why?" he asks. He watches her struggle to twist off the cap twice before taking the bottle from her hand and opening it easily.
She shrugs and takes a little sip of her drink once she's gotten it back from him. "So I don't have to sleep all alone."
"Rachel..."
As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she wishes she hadn't said them, even if they are true. She's an affectionate drunk. This isn't new or different or even particularly interesting information, as far as she's concerned, and she wants someone to be touching her, sleeping beside her. But she can see his reticence, and she wishes that she'd either kept her mouth shut or that he'd jumped at the chance to stay.
She sets her bottle on the counter and turns her back to Noah, sweeping her hair over her shoulder. "Help me?"
He slides the zipper down slowly, stopping just below where it caught earlier. "There you go."
"Thank you." She turns to look up at him through her eyelashes. "You should stay," she repeats quietly.
"I still have some studying to do," he tells her. She's drunk, which makes this a bad idea all over, but he really does need to go over his notes again.
She wants to believe him, but she doesn't, not really. "Okay," she says, keeping her tone light. "Thank you for picking me up."
"Any time, Rach."
She walks him to the door with her half-unzipped dress gaping at the back, turning the lock and sliding the chain as soon as he's gone, just like she would any other time.
She can feel the loneliness wash over her as she changes for bed. It's not at all an unfamiliar feeling; Rachel grew up feeling lonely, wishing for a little brother or sister, wondering about her mother, praying for a best friend, any friend. Feeling like she's all alone and always will be isn't new. But she's drunk, and alcohol makes her more dramatic and more needy.
It's a little embarrassing, but there are tears in her eyes when she stands in the bathroom to wash her face, tears that she splashes away with lukewarm water and pats dry with a soft towel. She drinks a whole glass of water before crawling into bed, to fight the hangover she's certain to have tomorrow morning, then turns out the light.
And stares up at the ceiling in the darkness.
She wasn't just with Finn because it was easy. She was with Finn so she wouldn't be completely alone. Being with him, even if they didn't have any time to spend together, at least gave her the illusion of having someone to go to, someone to save her from being alone forever.
She can't stop the tears that well up in her eyes, and no matter how many times she swallows against the lump in her throat, it won't go away.
The tears she cries are mostly out of self-pity, which leads to something like self-loathing, and she's completely drained when she falls asleep.*
Puck makes an appointment to meet with his adviser before he registers for next semester's classes, partially because the university tells him he has to and partially because he has to declare his major.
He knows that everyone thinks he's just been fucking around for two years, getting through gen eds and taking school only as seriously as he has to, but that's not true. He had to work his ass off to get into college, and it's not the sort of opportunity that he's just going to throw away now that he has it. He wants to do it right, to choose a major that leads to a career that he really likes, something that he's going to be able to do for the next forty or so years.
Maybe some people get advisers who are super-dedicated and go out of their way to help their advisees figure out what the hell they want to do, but Puck didn't. Dr. Jarrett seems nice enough, but he's one of those professors who has about a hundred students he's advising, all of whom are undecided and probably going to drop out before they ever manage to choose a major. It's not that the guy doesn't do his job, because he does, but Puck can tell that he just doesn't really give a fuck.
Puck sits down on the empty chair in the guy's super messy office, looking past the mountain of papers on Dr. Jarrett's desk. "You're here to discuss a major, right, Noah?"
Puck nods. "I want to be an architect." Dr. Jarrett looks at him expectantly. "My dad left when I was little, but even before he did, my mom wanted more than we had. She used to draw up like, floor plans for her dream house, and I used to really like listening to her talk about what it would be like. I think I'd be good at doing that for people." It's kind of an oversimplification, and he fumbles his way through it, but Puck knows that it gets his point across.
The professor just nods. "And a minor?"
"Sociology."
"Logical." Dr. Jarrett looks sort of proud or something, which is a look Puck's kind of getting used to seeing on the faces of authority figures and shit. It's weird how much he likes it. "Let's talk about what classes you're going to take next semester."*
He's procrastinating when Santana comes into his room, looking at the Facebook page of the girl he hooked up with last weekend. She tried to friend him, which he's going to ignore, but not until he's at least looked at it to gauge her crazy. It'd be nice to have a fuck buddy, someone he can just call up instead of having to go looking every time he wants to get laid. This girl is not a candidate, based on his standard criteria.
"Have you talked to Rachel today?" Santana asks, leaning against the doorway. He shakes his head. "We were supposed to have lunch together on campus, and she didn't show up, and her phone goes straight to voice mail when I call."
He shrugs. "She forgot and her phone is off." It doesn't seem like such a big deal to him.
"When was the last time Rachel forgot to do something she was supposed to do with you?" she asks pointedly.
Okay, so he can't remember Rachel ever forgetting anything. She's like an elephant or whatever, annoyingly so.
"I called Finn and asked him to stop by her apartment, to check on her," she goes on. "Her car was in the parking lot, but she didn't answer when he knocked." That doesn't necessarily mean anything either, given all the places that are within walking distance of Rachel's apartment, but he knows Santana knows that, so he doesn't say anything. "I'm worried about her," she says quietly. "Do you remember what today is?"
Actually, he doesn't even know what today's date is, so he looks at his computer screen to check, hovering his cursor over the clock in the corner. Fuck. "Her dad."
"A year ago," Santana agrees with a nod. "Look, I can't go over there. I have a test in my economics class."
Puck looks at her blandly. "You want me to go check on her." And she isn't asking, she's telling.
She shrugs one shoulder. "You have a key." He rolls his eyes and closes his computer, setting it aside. "Puck, please."
She doesn't really have to ask, because he's already getting up and shoving his phone in his pocket. "I'll let you know when I talk to her."
Santana is a great friend, and Puck knows that. She's been there for him plenty of times over the years. He gets that she's worried about Rachel because she really does care about the girl. But Santana doesn't do so well with the big emotional stuff, even her own big stuff. She runs away if she can, shuts down a little if she can't, even when it's someone she loves. So Puck will take the bullet, so to speak, and save Santana from having to do or having to feel guilty about not doing it.
Rachel lets out a sigh when she hears the knocking on her door. She wonders if it's Finn again, or if someone else has decided to come looking for her. Five years ago, the thought that someone would come looking for her because she disappeared for half a day would have thrilled her, but right now, she really doesn't want to see anyone, well-meaning or otherwise.
Dates on the calendar don't hold any power.
She keeps teling herself that, has been telling herself that for a year. It worked on Daddy's birthday, but now, today....
She couldn't even bring herself to get out of bed to compose an email to explain her absence to her professors. She turned off her phone when she got Santana's first where are you? text message. She could barely manage to get up to tug the curtains closed over the windows to block out the light before she crawled back beneath the covers, burrowing down into the cocoon of her pillows and blankets, wallowing in the emptiness until she fell asleep.
Finn's knocking was what woke her up the first time, and then the knocking was joined by the shouting of her name through the door. She doesn't feel good about ignoring him, but she doesn't want to see anyone today. She doesn't feel like she can.
She lets out a little sigh when the new knocking stops, sinking further into her mattress and closing her eyes.
She nearly jumps out of her skin when Noah says her name from the doorway.
"Please leave," she sighs once she realizes she isn't in danger, looking over at him. He rolls his eyes. "Noah."
"Santana's really worried about you," he says quietly, ignoring what she wants and stepping into her bedroom.
"So why are you here?"
"Because Santana's allergic to human emotion." He grins when Rachel rolls her eyes, walks across the room to sit on the edge of the mattress. "Look, do you want to talk about it?"
"I want to be alone," she tells him seriously. "I didn't mean to concern anyone, but I stayed in all day because I wanted to be by myself."
"Okay," he agrees easily, toeing off his shoes. He pulls his legs up onto the bed and shifts back so he's leaning against the headboard, right where he can see the glare on her face perfectly. "You can be alone, and I'll just be here chillin', by myself."
"Noah."
"Shhh." He presses a finger to his lips and lets his head drop back so he's looking up at the ceiling. "I'm trying to be by myself here."
She lets out a tiny laugh, the only sound that can make its way past the lump that's risen in her throat. Being alone today wasn't about being by herself, but more about not having to talk about her daddy with anyone else, not being forced to answer any questions or endure those sympathetic looks that you think she'd be used to by now. But Noah has always understood things about her without her having to say them, and she thinks he understands this, too. And really, from the beginning of everything with Daddy, Noah has been the one who seemed to understand what she was feeling better than anyone else. So she doesn't say anything or ask him to leave, just lies there and closes her eyes.
Puck isn't watching her, because that shit's creepy, but he can tell when she falls asleep. Her breathing evens out and she goes very still beside him. He sends a text to Santana, tells her that Rachel's okay and he's going to hang out to make sure she stays that way, and turns off his phone.
Rachel isn't the kind of girl who needs someone to take care of her. She can handle her own shit, and she's independent to a fault. Sometimes though, Puck thinks that she might need someone to pick up some of the slack for her, like it gives her permission to let go and do or feel whatever it is she needs. And someday, she'll figure that out and ask for the help instead of pretending that she can do it all on her own.
He's still there when she wakes up, lying beside her and reading the book she had on her bedside table. "Hi."
"Hey." He closes the book, but keeps his finger between the pages, like he's holding his place. "I kinda like this."
"It's a sequel," she tells him quietly, her voice scratchy with sleep. "The first one is her parents dying from her point of view." He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't look away either, even though he wants to. It kills him that she's reading a book about a girl whose parents died right now.
They order Chinese when she admits that she hasn't eaten anything today, and they sit in the living room to eat, even though she isn't hungry. Her chest feels as empty as her stomach, hollow all the way through, though the feeling dissipates a little after some veggie stir fry and two Friends reruns. Maybe this is the sort of day she should have been trying to have all along, low-key and quiet instead of going for complete isolation.
"Thank you for coming over," she says quietly as the credits roll on an episode. "For checking on me." She toys with the edge of the throw blanket she has over her lap so she doesn't have to look at him.
"Sure."
He watches her press her lips together, then take a little breath. "Do you think--" She cuts herself off with a little sigh, like she's annoyed with herself, and looks over at him. "Do you think you could stay with me tonight?" Her lips quirk up in a ghost of a smile, though it doesn't meet her eyes. "You know I wouldn't normally ask, but...I thought I wanted to be alone today, and I was wrong."
She's breaking his fucking heart with this shit.
He just nods. "Yeah, I'll stay."
It's only like, ten o'clock, and he can't even remember the last time he went to bed this early, but he can see the exhaustion on her face, so he doesn't say anything about it. He just texts Santana to let her know that he's not coming home tonight, changes into the sweats (Finn's, obviously) that Rachel produces from her dresser, and gets into the bed beside her, letting out a little hum when she tells him good night and turns off the light.
Rachel thinks that just his presence beside her will be enough to make her feel better, so she curls up on her left side like always, her back to Noah when she bends her legs and tucks one hand beneath her pillow. She listens to the quiet sound of his breathing when she closes her eyes.
He puts his hand behind his head as he lies on his back, trying to figure out when the last time he and Rachel shared a bed was, and kind of feeling like shit when he realizes that it was a year ago today, after he picked her up from the hospital where her daddy was dying. He's wondering if she remembers when she says his name quietly in the darkness. "Yeah?"
Rachel turns over onto her opposite side to face Noah, tucking one hand under her cheek as she looks at him through the darkness. "I'm not usually the biggest fan of it, but would you be averse to some cuddling?" she asks softly. She feels incredibly silly for asking at all, but even more so when she realizes that she just asked Noah Puckerman how he feels about cuddling.
All he can really see is the whites of her eyes when he looks over at her. "C'mere."
She turns back over as she moves to the middle of the bed so Noah can press his chest against her back, his hand resting on her hip over her pajama pants. He's warm and solid behind her, and she lets out a little breath when he presses his lips against her shoulder through her tee shirt. "Thank you," she murmurs quietly, relaxing back into him.
"G'night, Rach," he answers, squeezing her hip gently.
She remembers the last time she fell asleep with Noah, right after she found out that Daddy had died, the way that he'd pulled her close and held her tight until she fell asleep. But what really sticks with her, the thing she's caught herself thinking about once or twice, is how it felt to wake up with him. She knows that it was an illusion, just the fact that she was literally beside him, but it was almost like she wasn't all alone, the way she's spent most of her life feeling, like someone else would notice if she if she actually fell apart and shattered into a million little pieces.
She puts her hand over his on her hip and slips her fingers between his just because it feels right, and she feels better, more relaxed in the moments before she falls asleep than she has all day.
Chapter: 8/17
Rating: R
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Word Count: 6,600
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 spends most of November dreading Thanksgiving, and why shouldn't she after how terribly it went last year? Besides that, this is the first real holiday she's celebrated since Daddy died, and none of them are ever going to be the same again. This is just the beginning. After Thanksgiving, there's Hanukkah and her birthday and Christmas, a holiday that she shared with Daddy more than anyone else.
This has always been her favorite time of year. It's all cashmere and twinkle lights and nutmeg and snowflakes, and none of it's ever going to be the same. She hates that it's been ruined for her.
This year, Aunt Donna and Uncle Jake are hosting the Thanksgiving festivities, which is really just icing on the cake. Rachel can't stand that woman, and it's significantly harder to get away from someone when you're a guest in her house.
Rachel spends Wednesday night baking an apple pie, which she has no intention of eating, and putting together a couple of dishes for herself so she doesn't go hungry when Aunt Donna insists that she 'forgot' Rachel's veganism and, 'why don't you just try a bit of this macaroni and cheese, hon?'
She and Dad get up early to go to Cleveland, stopping at Starbucks for pumpkin spice lattes and playing songs from their favorite musicals for the drive. It all feels almost normal, except for the fact that Daddy's supposed to be sitting here in the front seat instead of her, complimenting his family for their musical taste but suggesting, as tactfully as he could manage, that perhaps they could try listening to something else for just a bit. (He always appreciated the theater, and he absolutely supported Rachel's aspirations, but he liked to take a break for something a bit more mainstream after a while.)
When that thought occurs to her, Rachel pushes it away and switches ahead to "Popular" in the playlist they're listening to. It isn't her favorite song from Wicked, obviously, but it's about as far away from what's going on in her head as she can get.
In an effort to avoid family dramatics, Rachel spends the time before dinner is ready sitting in the basement with Uncle Jake and her cousins, Clayton and Dalton, watching the football game. There aren't many things she cares less about than professional football, but it's better than avoiding concerned looks and passive-aggressive comments from her aunt.
No, she gets to wait until she's politely turning down mashed potatoes (loaded, she knows, with butter and cream) and Aunt Donna purses her lips.
"Rachel, I don't know how you survive on nothing but beans and vegetables," she says, putting a greasy-looking turkey drumstick on Dalton's plate before passing it back to him.
Rachel bites the inside of her cheek, but then it's like something boils over. "Well, if you would make any sort of effort to understand my decision instead of just criticizing it," she begins, setting her fork on her admittedly quite empty plate, "then perhaps you'd know that I do eat more than beans and vegetables. And for that matter, maybe you would make an effort to prepare something more substantial, and frankly, more festive for the holiday that I could actually eat."
Aunt Donna's mouth is in a perfect o when Rachel picks up her fork and spears a brussel sprout, and she catches a little smile on Nana's lips from the corner of her eye.
Her aunt is salty for the rest of the meal, but Rachel feels fantastic, honestly. She's been vegan since just after she turned sixteen, when she first watched Food, Inc. and started researching the diet in earnest. It's been nearly four years, and it feels good to finally say something so definitive to the woman who has, ridiculously, been her most vocal critic. She doesn't go out of her way to engage Aunt Donna in conversation for the rest of the meal, but she volunteers to to help with the dishes since the china has to be washed by hand and she didn't do any of the cooking.
She has her hands in the sink full of soapy water, and she's trying not to think about the bits of poor, sad birds that she just scraped into the trash can when Nana walks into the room and pulls a clean dish towel from the drawer next to the sink. "Those boys don't have any manners," she comments, drying one of the plates Rachel has stacked in the drain board.
Instead of saying anything, Rachel just offers her grandmother a little smirk. Clayton and Dalton don't have any manners because their mother babies them. She has literally never seen either of them even offer to wash a dish or help cook a single thing.
They work together in companionable silence for a few minutes, until Nana pulls Rachel out of her thoughts about how much she actually hates washing dishes by hand, saying, "David told me that you and your fellow called things off again." Rachel bites back the smile she feels threatening to come out. "You aren't getting any younger, bubbala."
"I'm not even twenty yet," she points out, rinsing the last bread plate. It's kind of wonderful, her grandmother bugging her about her love life and her hypothetical children (which she knows is coming). It's so normal.
"You've been saying for years that you want to be married and starting your family by the time you're twenty-five."
Rachel fights the urge to sigh. She meant that when she said it. Except now, it's so hard to even wrap her mind around building a family when the family she already knows has been torn apart.
"Things change," she says simply after a long moment, not quite meeting her grandmother's eyes. It's incredibly difficult to remember the last time she felt something more for a man than affection and perhaps sexual attraction. She loved Finn, yes, but she hasn't been stomach-full-of-butterflies in love since high school.
Nana takes the bread plate from Rachel's hand. "Make sure they don't change too much," she says gently.
She knows now that Nana isn't talking about men or children any more, but about her. "They won't," she promises in a whisper. And she means it. No matter what has happened in the last year and a half, she's going to have everything that she knows she's meant to have. She's going to New York, to Broadway. She's going to be a star.
She still believes that she can have it all.
*
Puck makes mistakes.
A lot of them. He always has.
The first time he remembers screwing up, he was six and playing in Ryan Baldwin's back yard next door to Puck's own house. He knew he was supposed to stay outside where his mom could look out the kitchen window and past the lilac bush to see him, but Ryan had just gotten the new NASCAR game for PlayStation, and he was just going to watch one quick lap at Daytona before he came back out. His mom was never supposed to notice. Except Ryan handed him the controller and told him he could try, and they'd been inside for nearly half an hour when Puck came back out. His mom wasn't in their house when he went to check, which freaked him the hell out. He went across the street to Mrs. Paxton's house just like he was supposed to in an emergency, because not being able to find your mom is definitely an emergency when you're six.
The old woman had hugged him so hard it hurt when she opened the door, and then she'd taken his hand and led him down the street where his mom was knocking on everyone's doors asking if they'd seen him. It turned out that she'd knocked at the Baldwins', but the boys were in the basement and Ryan's older brother was listening to music upstairs, so no one answered the door. She was super pissed that Puck had gone into the house at all, and he could see tears in her eyes before she pulled him into a tight hug. Then she'd wrapped her hand around his upper arm and marched him up the street, talking the whole time about how she was going to spank him as soon as they got to the house because he knew better, and 'you don't scare me like that ever again, Noah Daniel.'
He never did anything like that again. (And the craziest thing is, as clear as the memory of being marched up the street is, he doesn't remember being spanked at all. But fuck, he remembers the tone of his mom's voice when she told him what she was going to do to him when they got home.)
And that's the thing: Puck learns from his mistakes.
Yeah, fucking around with Quinn like he did was a huge fucking mistake, one that he didn't repeat. (Making out with Rachel when she was pissed off at Finn was not the same thing as sleeping with Quinn because she didn't have any self-esteem, and he never would have let things go that far with Rachel anyhow, whatever anyone else thinks.) He hasn't had sex without a condom even once since the day he heard that she was pregnant. He stopped with the real delinquency stuff after he got sent to juvie; the worst shit he's done since then is use a fake ID and roll through some stop signs. Mr. Schue caught him cheating on a Spanish test senior year, and even though the guy just gave him a zero without writing him up, Puck never did that again either.
So, now that he's done the relationship thing in college and gotten cheated on, he's not going to make that mistake again.
He and Santana throw a party at their place the weekend before classes start again in January, and it turns into kind of a clusterfuck. Finn invites a couple of his football friends, and Sam brings a couple of people he knows from the residence halls, and Santana seems to know fucking everyone. All Puck can hope is that no one calls the cops on them, because just about everyone is underage, and just about everyone is drunk.
Including Rachel.
He finds her in the kitchen when he's trying to get away from this girl he fucked back before winter break. She's sitting on the counter, sipping something from a red cup and looking dubiously at the guy talking to her, one of Finn's football friends. He walks over and leans against the counter next to where she's sitting. "'Sup, baby?" he greets. He catches the dirty look on the football guy's face out of the corner of his eye.
"Noah!" she exclaims, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. She's totally oblivious to the guy walking away, leaving them alone together. "I'm drunk."
He thinks it's kind of adorable how she always announces it, like he can't tell. Basically everything about her is adorable when she's drunk. "I see that."
She lifts an eyebrow and takes another sip of her drink. "Shouldn't you be pursuing a companion for the evening?" she asks.
"Nah." He takes her cup from her hand - she lets him - and takes a little sip. "I got that shit locked down already."
She makes a face and takes her cup back. She hates the way Noah talks about sex sometimes, like it doesn't mean anything. She understands now that it doesn't always have to mean something, and she's certainly not the most experienced girl in the world (given that she's only been with one man), but she knows that sex with Finn was better when she was still in love with him. And maybe it doesn't always mean something emotionally, but that doesn't mean that sex doesn't mean something every time.
She's drunk and she isn't making sense in her own head.
"Does that mean you've found a new friend?" she asks, emphasizing the last word. Puck rolls his eyes.
"No, I don't have a fuck buddy." He doesn't want to commit to just one girl for anything, if he's being honest. Like, he's not the same guy he was when he was sixteen, and it's about more than getting what he wants, but he'd like to have that mutual satisfaction thing going on with more than one girl, that's all. He keeps all of that to himself though.
"What do you think are the chances that Santana isn't going to have sex tonight?" she asks abruptly.
He blinks. "Zero."
She makes a face. She was hoping that maybe she could stay here, with Santana, instead of having to leave with Finn. She loves him to death for being her sober driver, but when she saw him about half an hour ago, she could tell that he was ready to leave. It's only a matter of time before he finds her and spoils her fun.
"You could stay in my bed," he offers, leering a little.
"I thought you already had a bed partner lined up."
He shrugs, leaning just a little closer to her. "I'd rather have you," he says, and maybe it's just a little bit too honest, but whatever. Vodka does stupid shit to his head.
Rachel just shakes her head, because she obviously thinks Puck's just fucking around. And yeah, he is. He and Rachel are just friends, and the fact that she's hot and he'd fucking love to know what she's like in bed isn't enough for him to ruin their friendship.
Apparently he's growing up.*
Rachel's checking her email on her phone when she's walking home from class on the day that she gets her transfer acceptance from NYU. Her steps falter, and she nearly gets plowed over by an overweight boy in a green sweatshirt, but she's so excited that she doesn't care, doesn't really even register the affront that would usually leave her all sorts of indignant.
She also doesn't care about the strange looks she gets when she lets out a little squeal and bounces on the balls of her feet a little as she rereads the email.
She calls Dad at work to share the news. "I'm going to NYU!" They're words that she's said before, meant before, but this time, it's different. This time, only her own death is going to stop her.
"You got your acceptance! Oh, Rachel, honey, I'm so happy for you." He means it, and she knows that, and she loves him so, so much for it. Truthfully, she loves everything right now. "We can go apartment hunting when you're on spring break," he suggests, and they spend half an hour on the phone even though she knows that he should probably working, doing lawyerly things.
For nearly two years, New York has felt like this almost mythical thing to her, just beyond the grasp of her fingertips, and finally she's going to have it.
Santana insists on a night out when Rachel bursts into the house to tell them that she's finally going to New York. Puck wants to hang out with them, but he has a sociology test tomorrow afternoon, and he really needs to study for that. He hasn't quite picked a major yet, but he's into this sociology stuff, and he thinks he wants to minor in it, which means he needs a good grade in this class.
Noah sits on Santana's bed with his notes while they get ready, insisting that he won't actually be getting any studying done until they're out of the house, so he might as well get to hang out while they do the 'girly getting ready shit.'
"Could you help me?" she asks him, walking up next to where he's sitting on the bed. She went into the bathroom to change out of her jeans into this dress with the little cap sleeves, and normally she has no problem dressing herself, no matter the placement or style of the closure, but the zipper keeps catching at the seam that creates the waist of this dress. She could make it work, certainly, but he's just sitting there, so he might as well help.
She pulls her hair over her shoulder when he nods, turning so he can slide the zipper upwards. He makes a point of skimming the backs of his fingers over the bare skin between her shoulder blades, even though it's completely unnecessary, then pulls the zipper up easily. "It looks better on you than Santana," he tells her when she thanks him. He knows she borrowed the dress, and he thinks he likes it on Rachel because her tits aren't spilling out the top of it. (And yeah, it's weird that he likes it better this way, but whatever.)
It makes her cheeks feel a little warm when he compliments her, and she thinks she can still feel his fingertips against her skin. "Thank you."
They go to a club that's having a ladies' night, and Santana basically spends all of the time that they're not dancing sweet talking men into buying them drinks. "We're celebrating her move to New York," she tells them, biting her lip just a little. "Even if she is leaving me behind to do it."
It's almost sad how many men fall for it, this subtle and completely false allusion to their lesbian relationship, except it's getting Rachel excessive amounts of free alcohol, which most definitely is not sad.
About half an hour before last call, Santana runs into a boy from one of her business classes, and even drunk, Rachel can tell that her friend is going home with this boy the moment she sees them together.
"It's fine," she insists when Santana drags her to the bathroom to ask if she minds. "I just sent Noah a text, so he'll be here soon." She meets Santana's eyes in the mirror and bumps the girl's hip with her own. "Go have fun."
She's standing outside of the place when he pulls up to the curb, her arms crossed tightly over her chest because it's about forty degrees and she isn't wearing a coat. "Why do you wear a short-sleeved dress when it's this cold?" he asks when she closes the door behind her, reaching over to turn up the heat and point a vent at her.
She shakes her head, tugging the seat belt across her body. "It won't matter how many times I explain it to you, you'll never understand," she insists, fighting the shudder than want to run through her body and make her teeth chatter. "But alcohol helps." She's almost shivering, yes, but she doesn't really feel uncomfortable. She knows her feet are going to ache tomorrow, because they always do when she wears this particular pair of heels, but there's enough alcohol in her system that she can't really even feel her feet at all. It makes her nearly impervious to the cold as well.
Puck just shakes his head. She's right: He will never understand that shit.
"You should come up with me," she says when he pulls onto her street. She shrugs her shoulder when he looks over at her questioningly. "My zipper could get stuck again."
He ends up using his key to get into her apartment because hers is buried at the bottom of her little purse, not that he understands how anything gets buried in a purse that small. Seriously, growing up with women and living with one doesn't make all the mysteries go away.
She locks the door behind them out of habit, ignoring the amused little smirk on Noah's lips. "When is your test tomorrow?" she asks, dropping her bag and walking to the kitchen.
"One."
"You should just stay here," she suggests, reaching into her fridge for a bottle of Vitamin Water. She wonders how small her kitchen in New York will be, how spoiled she's been by this place. She doesn't care if she lives with a hot plate and a mini-fridge, it'll be perfect.
"Why?" he asks. He watches her struggle to twist off the cap twice before taking the bottle from her hand and opening it easily.
She shrugs and takes a little sip of her drink once she's gotten it back from him. "So I don't have to sleep all alone."
"Rachel..."
As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she wishes she hadn't said them, even if they are true. She's an affectionate drunk. This isn't new or different or even particularly interesting information, as far as she's concerned, and she wants someone to be touching her, sleeping beside her. But she can see his reticence, and she wishes that she'd either kept her mouth shut or that he'd jumped at the chance to stay.
She sets her bottle on the counter and turns her back to Noah, sweeping her hair over her shoulder. "Help me?"
He slides the zipper down slowly, stopping just below where it caught earlier. "There you go."
"Thank you." She turns to look up at him through her eyelashes. "You should stay," she repeats quietly.
"I still have some studying to do," he tells her. She's drunk, which makes this a bad idea all over, but he really does need to go over his notes again.
She wants to believe him, but she doesn't, not really. "Okay," she says, keeping her tone light. "Thank you for picking me up."
"Any time, Rach."
She walks him to the door with her half-unzipped dress gaping at the back, turning the lock and sliding the chain as soon as he's gone, just like she would any other time.
She can feel the loneliness wash over her as she changes for bed. It's not at all an unfamiliar feeling; Rachel grew up feeling lonely, wishing for a little brother or sister, wondering about her mother, praying for a best friend, any friend. Feeling like she's all alone and always will be isn't new. But she's drunk, and alcohol makes her more dramatic and more needy.
It's a little embarrassing, but there are tears in her eyes when she stands in the bathroom to wash her face, tears that she splashes away with lukewarm water and pats dry with a soft towel. She drinks a whole glass of water before crawling into bed, to fight the hangover she's certain to have tomorrow morning, then turns out the light.
And stares up at the ceiling in the darkness.
She wasn't just with Finn because it was easy. She was with Finn so she wouldn't be completely alone. Being with him, even if they didn't have any time to spend together, at least gave her the illusion of having someone to go to, someone to save her from being alone forever.
She can't stop the tears that well up in her eyes, and no matter how many times she swallows against the lump in her throat, it won't go away.
The tears she cries are mostly out of self-pity, which leads to something like self-loathing, and she's completely drained when she falls asleep.*
Puck makes an appointment to meet with his adviser before he registers for next semester's classes, partially because the university tells him he has to and partially because he has to declare his major.
He knows that everyone thinks he's just been fucking around for two years, getting through gen eds and taking school only as seriously as he has to, but that's not true. He had to work his ass off to get into college, and it's not the sort of opportunity that he's just going to throw away now that he has it. He wants to do it right, to choose a major that leads to a career that he really likes, something that he's going to be able to do for the next forty or so years.
Maybe some people get advisers who are super-dedicated and go out of their way to help their advisees figure out what the hell they want to do, but Puck didn't. Dr. Jarrett seems nice enough, but he's one of those professors who has about a hundred students he's advising, all of whom are undecided and probably going to drop out before they ever manage to choose a major. It's not that the guy doesn't do his job, because he does, but Puck can tell that he just doesn't really give a fuck.
Puck sits down on the empty chair in the guy's super messy office, looking past the mountain of papers on Dr. Jarrett's desk. "You're here to discuss a major, right, Noah?"
Puck nods. "I want to be an architect." Dr. Jarrett looks at him expectantly. "My dad left when I was little, but even before he did, my mom wanted more than we had. She used to draw up like, floor plans for her dream house, and I used to really like listening to her talk about what it would be like. I think I'd be good at doing that for people." It's kind of an oversimplification, and he fumbles his way through it, but Puck knows that it gets his point across.
The professor just nods. "And a minor?"
"Sociology."
"Logical." Dr. Jarrett looks sort of proud or something, which is a look Puck's kind of getting used to seeing on the faces of authority figures and shit. It's weird how much he likes it. "Let's talk about what classes you're going to take next semester."*
He's procrastinating when Santana comes into his room, looking at the Facebook page of the girl he hooked up with last weekend. She tried to friend him, which he's going to ignore, but not until he's at least looked at it to gauge her crazy. It'd be nice to have a fuck buddy, someone he can just call up instead of having to go looking every time he wants to get laid. This girl is not a candidate, based on his standard criteria.
"Have you talked to Rachel today?" Santana asks, leaning against the doorway. He shakes his head. "We were supposed to have lunch together on campus, and she didn't show up, and her phone goes straight to voice mail when I call."
He shrugs. "She forgot and her phone is off." It doesn't seem like such a big deal to him.
"When was the last time Rachel forgot to do something she was supposed to do with you?" she asks pointedly.
Okay, so he can't remember Rachel ever forgetting anything. She's like an elephant or whatever, annoyingly so.
"I called Finn and asked him to stop by her apartment, to check on her," she goes on. "Her car was in the parking lot, but she didn't answer when he knocked." That doesn't necessarily mean anything either, given all the places that are within walking distance of Rachel's apartment, but he knows Santana knows that, so he doesn't say anything. "I'm worried about her," she says quietly. "Do you remember what today is?"
Actually, he doesn't even know what today's date is, so he looks at his computer screen to check, hovering his cursor over the clock in the corner. Fuck. "Her dad."
"A year ago," Santana agrees with a nod. "Look, I can't go over there. I have a test in my economics class."
Puck looks at her blandly. "You want me to go check on her." And she isn't asking, she's telling.
She shrugs one shoulder. "You have a key." He rolls his eyes and closes his computer, setting it aside. "Puck, please."
She doesn't really have to ask, because he's already getting up and shoving his phone in his pocket. "I'll let you know when I talk to her."
Santana is a great friend, and Puck knows that. She's been there for him plenty of times over the years. He gets that she's worried about Rachel because she really does care about the girl. But Santana doesn't do so well with the big emotional stuff, even her own big stuff. She runs away if she can, shuts down a little if she can't, even when it's someone she loves. So Puck will take the bullet, so to speak, and save Santana from having to do or having to feel guilty about not doing it.
Rachel lets out a sigh when she hears the knocking on her door. She wonders if it's Finn again, or if someone else has decided to come looking for her. Five years ago, the thought that someone would come looking for her because she disappeared for half a day would have thrilled her, but right now, she really doesn't want to see anyone, well-meaning or otherwise.
Dates on the calendar don't hold any power.
She keeps teling herself that, has been telling herself that for a year. It worked on Daddy's birthday, but now, today....
She couldn't even bring herself to get out of bed to compose an email to explain her absence to her professors. She turned off her phone when she got Santana's first where are you? text message. She could barely manage to get up to tug the curtains closed over the windows to block out the light before she crawled back beneath the covers, burrowing down into the cocoon of her pillows and blankets, wallowing in the emptiness until she fell asleep.
Finn's knocking was what woke her up the first time, and then the knocking was joined by the shouting of her name through the door. She doesn't feel good about ignoring him, but she doesn't want to see anyone today. She doesn't feel like she can.
She lets out a little sigh when the new knocking stops, sinking further into her mattress and closing her eyes.
She nearly jumps out of her skin when Noah says her name from the doorway.
"Please leave," she sighs once she realizes she isn't in danger, looking over at him. He rolls his eyes. "Noah."
"Santana's really worried about you," he says quietly, ignoring what she wants and stepping into her bedroom.
"So why are you here?"
"Because Santana's allergic to human emotion." He grins when Rachel rolls her eyes, walks across the room to sit on the edge of the mattress. "Look, do you want to talk about it?"
"I want to be alone," she tells him seriously. "I didn't mean to concern anyone, but I stayed in all day because I wanted to be by myself."
"Okay," he agrees easily, toeing off his shoes. He pulls his legs up onto the bed and shifts back so he's leaning against the headboard, right where he can see the glare on her face perfectly. "You can be alone, and I'll just be here chillin', by myself."
"Noah."
"Shhh." He presses a finger to his lips and lets his head drop back so he's looking up at the ceiling. "I'm trying to be by myself here."
She lets out a tiny laugh, the only sound that can make its way past the lump that's risen in her throat. Being alone today wasn't about being by herself, but more about not having to talk about her daddy with anyone else, not being forced to answer any questions or endure those sympathetic looks that you think she'd be used to by now. But Noah has always understood things about her without her having to say them, and she thinks he understands this, too. And really, from the beginning of everything with Daddy, Noah has been the one who seemed to understand what she was feeling better than anyone else. So she doesn't say anything or ask him to leave, just lies there and closes her eyes.
Puck isn't watching her, because that shit's creepy, but he can tell when she falls asleep. Her breathing evens out and she goes very still beside him. He sends a text to Santana, tells her that Rachel's okay and he's going to hang out to make sure she stays that way, and turns off his phone.
Rachel isn't the kind of girl who needs someone to take care of her. She can handle her own shit, and she's independent to a fault. Sometimes though, Puck thinks that she might need someone to pick up some of the slack for her, like it gives her permission to let go and do or feel whatever it is she needs. And someday, she'll figure that out and ask for the help instead of pretending that she can do it all on her own.
He's still there when she wakes up, lying beside her and reading the book she had on her bedside table. "Hi."
"Hey." He closes the book, but keeps his finger between the pages, like he's holding his place. "I kinda like this."
"It's a sequel," she tells him quietly, her voice scratchy with sleep. "The first one is her parents dying from her point of view." He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't look away either, even though he wants to. It kills him that she's reading a book about a girl whose parents died right now.
They order Chinese when she admits that she hasn't eaten anything today, and they sit in the living room to eat, even though she isn't hungry. Her chest feels as empty as her stomach, hollow all the way through, though the feeling dissipates a little after some veggie stir fry and two Friends reruns. Maybe this is the sort of day she should have been trying to have all along, low-key and quiet instead of going for complete isolation.
"Thank you for coming over," she says quietly as the credits roll on an episode. "For checking on me." She toys with the edge of the throw blanket she has over her lap so she doesn't have to look at him.
"Sure."
He watches her press her lips together, then take a little breath. "Do you think--" She cuts herself off with a little sigh, like she's annoyed with herself, and looks over at him. "Do you think you could stay with me tonight?" Her lips quirk up in a ghost of a smile, though it doesn't meet her eyes. "You know I wouldn't normally ask, but...I thought I wanted to be alone today, and I was wrong."
She's breaking his fucking heart with this shit.
He just nods. "Yeah, I'll stay."
It's only like, ten o'clock, and he can't even remember the last time he went to bed this early, but he can see the exhaustion on her face, so he doesn't say anything about it. He just texts Santana to let her know that he's not coming home tonight, changes into the sweats (Finn's, obviously) that Rachel produces from her dresser, and gets into the bed beside her, letting out a little hum when she tells him good night and turns off the light.
Rachel thinks that just his presence beside her will be enough to make her feel better, so she curls up on her left side like always, her back to Noah when she bends her legs and tucks one hand beneath her pillow. She listens to the quiet sound of his breathing when she closes her eyes.
He puts his hand behind his head as he lies on his back, trying to figure out when the last time he and Rachel shared a bed was, and kind of feeling like shit when he realizes that it was a year ago today, after he picked her up from the hospital where her daddy was dying. He's wondering if she remembers when she says his name quietly in the darkness. "Yeah?"
Rachel turns over onto her opposite side to face Noah, tucking one hand under her cheek as she looks at him through the darkness. "I'm not usually the biggest fan of it, but would you be averse to some cuddling?" she asks softly. She feels incredibly silly for asking at all, but even more so when she realizes that she just asked Noah Puckerman how he feels about cuddling.
All he can really see is the whites of her eyes when he looks over at her. "C'mere."
She turns back over as she moves to the middle of the bed so Noah can press his chest against her back, his hand resting on her hip over her pajama pants. He's warm and solid behind her, and she lets out a little breath when he presses his lips against her shoulder through her tee shirt. "Thank you," she murmurs quietly, relaxing back into him.
"G'night, Rach," he answers, squeezing her hip gently.
She remembers the last time she fell asleep with Noah, right after she found out that Daddy had died, the way that he'd pulled her close and held her tight until she fell asleep. But what really sticks with her, the thing she's caught herself thinking about once or twice, is how it felt to wake up with him. She knows that it was an illusion, just the fact that she was literally beside him, but it was almost like she wasn't all alone, the way she's spent most of her life feeling, like someone else would notice if she if she actually fell apart and shattered into a million little pieces.
She puts her hand over his on her hip and slips her fingers between his just because it feels right, and she feels better, more relaxed in the moments before she falls asleep than she has all day.