two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, chapter 4
Glee. 3,508 words. I don't know how this ended up so long! I kinda had to sacrifice Puck's inner monologue-ish third person narrator for this chapter because I had too much Rachel stuff going on and dialogue and I'm bad at multi-tasking :( But have no fear, it should be swinging back around next chapter. Thanks so much for all your continued support; hope you all enjoy this!
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4. i'm a cuckoo
-belle & sebastian
By the time the first snow of the year blanketed their town, Quinn was starting to show and Rachel had finally come to terms with the fact that there was absolutely no future to be had with Finn. Puck still hadn’t manned up and told her the kid was his because, well, what was the use? Rachel was moving on and Quinn was still hell bent on never letting anyone find out the truth. To make matters worse, it had gotten to the point where she didn’t even acknowledge his existence anymore. Yeah, they still hung in the same circles and had the same friends, but she chose to just…Pretend he wasn't there.
Instead of dwelling on it or getting pissed off, Puck dealt with his situation the way he knew best: fucking as many girls/women/cougars (really, anything with a vagina) as humanly possible. Well, that, and spending more time with Berry.
A combination of their increase in face time and his heightened sex sense was probably what made him realize that Rachel? Was really fucking horny. Like, more so than usual. She was maybe also a little sad (his feelings sense wasn’t quite as finely tuned as the sex sense) but definitely really, really horny.
It was colder than a snowman’s ass outside the night he finally decided to confront her about it. They had been sitting around with their books spread around them for an hour getting absolutely nothing done and he knew something was up. But he was too exhausted from practice, it was dark outside, and his room was freakishly cold, so he just wasn’t in the mood to deal with it. Instead, he decided to lie on his bed and toss his basketball to himself as she sat at his desk, her chin in her hands. He was telling her about some chick who said she’d write his Macbeth paper for him if he had sex with her (no brainer there) as Rachel stared longingly at a picture of Finn and him in their football uniforms with a bunch of teammates and cheerleaders.
"Yo, Berry. Were you listening to anything I just said?"
He raised his voice and startled her from her daze. She jumped slightly, turning in her chair. “Oh yeah, something about Macbeth? I love that play. One of Shakespeare’s best.”
His eyes narrowed as he raised his chin and examined her closely. After a second, he sat up abruptly and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“Rach, we gotta get you laid.”
“Um, excuse me? Noah, I recognize that your brain is hardwired to your penis-” SHE TOTALLY JUST SAID PENIS. WHY DID HE FIND THIS SO HILARIOUS? “But sex doesn’t actually solve everyone’s problems. In fact, more often than not it just makes things more complicated.”
“And that, my friend, is what I call an untruthitude.” He set his basketball on his pillow and turned back to her. “Look, I’m just trying to help you out here. I don’t know if you knew this, but I’m very in tune with the female body. And yours is practically beating me to death with all its simmering horniness.”
That was actually a bit of a stretch. It was less the female body he was in tune with, and rather…Just his dick.
“Please don’t use that word, I find it grotesque.” She paused for a second, looking anywhere but at him, “However. You make a valid point. Maybe I am suffering from a bit of sexual frustration, but that makes me no less appalled that you’d make a suggestion so lewd and utterly preposterous. You know I’ve taken a vow of celibacy in honor of Finn.”
“Which is such bullshit.”
“To someone like you, maybe, but to someone like me, it’s highly symbolic.” She took a deep breath and raised her chin. “It represents the high school struggle: love strangled by circumstance. The doomed fate of a future never to be; a future cut down brutally before it’s time.” She looked back at him, the sharp hint of diva in her voice, “I don’t expect you to understand how fitting celibacy is.”
Puck and Rachel had been friends for a while now, so most of her crappy ass, melodramatic monologues were old news. But this? This was a fucking riot. Ordinarily, he’d keep his mouth shut and let her wallow in her heartache for a while, but this was too classic to pass up. He didn’t even bother to stifle the laugh that came roaring out.
“Oh my god, how do you even exist? It’s like you’re some fucking alien trapped in a human body!” When he realized she was looking at him like she would literally tear his balls off and eat them for breakfast, he coughed and quickly shut up. “Listen, Rach. High school really isn’t as hard as you make it. Now I know you dig Finn-” God, the whole world knew she dug Finn, “-and that being his friend and getting along just makes things worse, but you seriously gotta move on. I mean, you said it yourself: that he’s having this baby and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that.” Well, there was something someone could do…But that was another issue entirely. They were talking about Rachel here.
“So what exactly do you propose I do?”
“What I’ve been doing: go out there and get some ass!”
“Noah.” Her voice became soft as she glanced down at her hands. “You know I don’t approve of the way you choose to cope with your emotional stress.” When she looked back up at him, he saw genuine, unguarded concern. Lately, that look made his stomach do funny things. (And a part of him couldn’t help but wonder: if someone like Rachel, who he treated like shit for so many years, could care about him, why couldn’t Quinn?)
“I know you don’t, but just hear me out, okay?” His voice was low now too, and he was pretty sure they were on the verge of having one of their serious conversations. “Sometimes these bullshit little booty calls are all we’ve got to stay sane. If you go into it knowing it won’t last and just keep your distance, you’ll always have the upper hand. You get your needs met and you never get dumped or abandoned because you’re the one doing the dumping. If you just tried it, you’d see how it’s the perfect situation.”
Hearing him say things like that never failed to remind her how they were such opposites. They just saw life through two fundamentally different lenses. Puck was all a-good-offense-makes-a-good-defense, and she was all it-doesn’t-matter-who-wins-or-loses-its-how-you-play-the-game. (Wow, he really was rubbing off on her.)
“You know, having meaningful relationships with people isn’t such a bad thing.” He glared at her skeptically. “I know you don’t agree with my personal philosophy with respect to matters of the heart, but saving yourself for someone who actually cares about you - who you could actually have a real relationship with…”
“Okay, Dr. Phil, I get it. Let’s save the lecture for another night.”
“I’m just saying-”
“Whatever, okay? This isn’t about me anyway, it’s about you and all your horny lady vibes.”
“Why are you always so crass? I told you that word grosses me out!”
“What? It’s the truth.”
He was right.
“Well, even if I did take your advice and find myself a male companion, things aren’t that simple. Other than Finn Hudson, there are a grand total of zero guys in our school that I find even remotely suitable.”
“Berry, stop being a punk ass and admit it: it’s not that there aren’t any guys for you, it’s that there aren’t any guys who want you.”
And there it was. The moment she’d been expecting from the day they started to be “friends.” It was like he had just slapped her across the face. Hard.
“No! No, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said quickly, scooting forward on the edge of his bed as she instinctively backed away. He reached a hand out and placed it on her knee. “Come on, Rachel. You know that’s not what I meant. Dude, you’re fucking hot. Why else would I have tried to get in your pants to begin with?” Well, there was the fact that he tried to get in everyone’s pants, but still.
“If you have a point, please get to it soon.”
“I’m just saying,” he took his hand off her knee and ran it through his hair. “It’s no wonder you don’t have dudes knocking down your door…You’re kind of intense.”
“For the record, you’re doing a pretty bad job of being my friend right now.” It was official, girls were impossible. “And whatever, I’ve just been focused on my music career, but if I decided I wanted to get a boyfriend, I totally could. Easily.”
She was seriously on a roll tonight. He had to practically bite his tongue to keep from laughing.
“So, this will sound very douchey of me, but I’m just being real with you. No matter what you think, you are not a normal girl. You’re Rachel fucking Berry, for god’s sake! You sing in Glee club and get straight A’s, you wear really short skirts with really high neck sweaters, and to top it off, you don’t give a shit about what people think. You always - always - say what’s on your mind, even if it means getting Slushee'd or eating lunch alone. And even then, when anyone else would cave, you just bring an extra set of clothes to school or your iPod to lunch and it’s like nothing ever happened. Rachel, you are intimidating and weird. And you seriously freak dudes out.”
“That's ridiculous. Any sane person would say those things are impressive for a girl my age.”
“Maybe that’s what your 45 year-old dads say, but that’s not what people at school think.”
Her hands were in her lap and she was staring at them contempletively. It wasn’t like this was news to her, but to actually hear someone say it to her face was difficult to digest. She didn’t have to say anything, he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“Oh come on, stop looking like I just kicked your puppy. I’m not saying you have to change who you are. I’m just saying you have no game. But lucky for you-” He stretched his arms above his head and cracked his knuckles because that’s what manly men did, and Puck was most certainly the manliest of men. “-you’re sitting in the presence of game royalty. Hell, I invented game. So don’t sweat it, just follow these tips and I promise you’ll have so many guys trying to get with you, you’ll have to beat ‘em away with a stick.”
Taking any sort of advice from Puck seemed unwise, but a nagging voice inside of her really wanted to know the secret and actually believed he had it. She stood up and eyed him suspiciously before taking a seat next to him on his bed.
“Okay, first? You need to learn how to speak English.”
“What? I have an impeccable grasp of the English language.”
“See? That’s what I mean. SPEAK ENGLISH PLEASE.” She didn’t even need to say it, the look on her face had Noah, you are so infantile! written all over it. “Second: no talking about Glee. Or music. Or Broadway. Just stick to neutral stuff like your favorite thing off the Taco Bell Value Menu or The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Y'know, things dudes like.” She scrunched her face up and stuck her tongue out; clearly not a fan of either. “And the last, most important lesson of all…” He reached over and flicked open the top three buttons of her cardigan. “Show a little bra and you’re basically guaranteed entry into every guy at McKinley’s pants. Even the popular ones.”
Her jaw dropped and she pulled her sweater closed quickly before punching Puck in the arm.
“Ow! For such a puny girl, you punch like a man!”
“God, I don’t know why I bother with you!”
When his laughter finally died down, he reached out and turned her chin towards him. “Hey.” The softness of his tone and the lazy grin on his face was almost enough to make her forget all the ‘douchey’ things he had done and said in the last half hour. “Maybe the sweater thing was a step too far, but all that other stuff is true.”
“You mean all that stuff about me being too confident, opinionated and smart?”
“Basically.”
“Just so I get it straight: you think the only way I can get a guy is by not being me?”
“Exactly.”
She looked at him for a moment and he could have sworn there was some freaky ass, I-see-into-your-soul, Jedi mind trick shit going on. When she spoke again, she had that same concerned expression. “I’d take offense to that if you didn’t think the same thing about yourself.”
There definitely was some weird, psychic connection shit going on because he was pretty sure he never told her that, but it was totally true. He didn’t get to where he was because of his sparkling personality or love of classic rock. If he learned anything from what happened with his dad, it was that he’d never let himself feel that way again. When you give people what they want, they’re more likely to stick around. The second you let them in and show them who you really are, you give them more of a reason to hate you and bounce.
“Yeah, well.” Now it was his turn to avoid her eyes.
“Did you ever think maybe that’s why Quinn never gave you a chance? I’m pretty sure that if she knew the real you, she’d have a hard time turning you down.”
See, that’s the thing. He did show her. She was one of the only people in that whole goddamn high school he’d been real with, and still he wasn’t good enough. The night they got together, he may have made the first move because he was totally trashed and she was totally hot, but by the end, something clicked and he felt like he finally saw what he was missing. That all the sneaking glances at her when Finn wasn’t paying attention wasn’t just lust. He knew what they did that night was wrong, but he felt something he had never felt before, and when he told her that in the gym their first day back, all she did was laugh. She said a guy like him would never ever have a chance with a girl like her while she was sober, even if he weren’t her boyfriend’s best friend. Turned out he wasn’t good enough to raise his own kid even.
Which was exactly why he wasn’t ready to tell Rachel the truth about the baby yet. It was just a whole can of fucked up worms he couldn't handle. That, and also because, though he didn’t quite know it yet, he was kinda maybe starting to think that he kinda maybe had feelings for her.
“Rach, all I’m saying,” he reached out and brushed her hair out of her face. A very un-Puck thing to do, but that had become a bit of a norm lately. “Is that you could have any dude you want, you just have to get over Finn and make a choice.”
Okay, feelings were definitely there, but they were tiny. Kinda maybe.
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So yeah, Rachel really did need to get laid. Having to see Finn everyday for an extra hour as he practiced his Justin Timberlake solo (you heard right: Finn Hudson. Singing Justin Timberlake.) certainly didn’t make it any easier. As she laughed with him and danced with him and felt the steady warmth of his body by hers it became obvious that Puck wasn’t so far off when he said she needed a guy.
The annoying thing though was that she couldn’t just go tell him that. If she were to flip flop so easily, she’d never hear the end of it. For a little while, a part of her considered adopting some of his tips, but if she showed up at school wearing a v-neck sweater and singing “Back That Thang Up” instead of Babs (she could never sacrifice music altogether for the sake of relieving pent up sexual tension) what she was doing would be so obvious.
So, as she was often forced to do in matters relating to school, she ignored her feelings altogether and buried herself in her music. Or at least tried to.
See, she always knew Puck was one of the hottest guys at McKinley, but now that her hormone levels were raging at unprecedented levels, she couldn’t focus on anything else. She tried giving him two songs to play on his guitar for her when he came over, but they’d never get to the second because she’d get so distracted by…Well, by him.
Since they generally met up right after his basketball practice, he was always at his prime level of hotness, with a baggy pair of sweats slung low on his hips (oh those hips!) and a tight tee that was snug in all the right places. Finally, he let his ridiculous mohawk grow out and now he had brown, vaguely wavy (albeit short) hair on the sides of his head and this deliriously wonderful little peak down the middle, so every time she saw him, all she wanted to do was run her hands through it. She also never noticed it before, but he even smelled fantastic. It was this combination of soap, Tag, and sweaty boy, which may not sound particularly enticing, but hello! Hormonal teenager!
After a few days of daydreaming things that made seeing Puck in person really uncomfortable, she realized she needed to end the madness and come up with a real way of getting over it. Which is why she told him to come over earlier than usual.
“Okay, so get whatever it is you have to tell me out of the way now because I have a lot of questions about what we did in Geometry today.” He was pulling his sweatshirt over his head, which meant Rachel got a good five seconds of straight up abs.
“So Noah, I’ve been thinking…”
“Oh man, not thinking.”
“-I’ve been thinking about what you said last time. About me needing a…physical outlet of sorts.”
“Oh yeah? Who’s the special dude?”
“See, that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Was she going to say what he thought she was going to say?
He immediately stopped rifling through his backpack and focused his attention on her like a laser.
“First of all, I’d just like to make it clear that even though I have no future with him, I am still very much in love with Finn. And despite the fact that we don’t even say hello to each other in the hall at school, I really do value the friendship you and I have.”
Puck rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s hold off on the warm and fuzzies and just come out with it, Berry.”
“Well, I already know that you are quite proficient in the kissing arena, and since we are both obviously in love with other people, we wouldn’t have to worry about our feelings getting in the way, so I was thinking maybe you and I could…”
Was this a dream? Because he was pretty sure he’s had a recurring series of dreams just like this, except Rachel was generally wearing black lace lingerie. No, this had to be real.
“-I mean, who says friends with benefits can’t work? I think it’s a very rational, level-headed approach to our situation, actually. It could be our little reward after a long night of homework. Another little incentive of sorts.”
The tiny part of him that had yet to accept that he kinda maybe totally had a thing for this girl told him this was a really bad idea. Lucky for him, the fairly substantial part of him that lived below the waist was what made all his decisions.
“-And I mean, I’m not abandoning my values at all because it’s not like you’re just some Joe Schmoe from school; we’re friends and if I had to do this with anyone, I’d rather do it with someone I know and trust-” she was a rambling, bumbling mess of nerves, and in two quick strides, he was right there, “-and this is just so convenient given you and I already hang out so much and you’re so-”
As he pressed his lips firmly against hers, he knew this was a bad idea but didn’t really give a fuck.
TBC
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4. i'm a cuckoo
-belle & sebastian
By the time the first snow of the year blanketed their town, Quinn was starting to show and Rachel had finally come to terms with the fact that there was absolutely no future to be had with Finn. Puck still hadn’t manned up and told her the kid was his because, well, what was the use? Rachel was moving on and Quinn was still hell bent on never letting anyone find out the truth. To make matters worse, it had gotten to the point where she didn’t even acknowledge his existence anymore. Yeah, they still hung in the same circles and had the same friends, but she chose to just…Pretend he wasn't there.
Instead of dwelling on it or getting pissed off, Puck dealt with his situation the way he knew best: fucking as many girls/women/cougars (really, anything with a vagina) as humanly possible. Well, that, and spending more time with Berry.
A combination of their increase in face time and his heightened sex sense was probably what made him realize that Rachel? Was really fucking horny. Like, more so than usual. She was maybe also a little sad (his feelings sense wasn’t quite as finely tuned as the sex sense) but definitely really, really horny.
It was colder than a snowman’s ass outside the night he finally decided to confront her about it. They had been sitting around with their books spread around them for an hour getting absolutely nothing done and he knew something was up. But he was too exhausted from practice, it was dark outside, and his room was freakishly cold, so he just wasn’t in the mood to deal with it. Instead, he decided to lie on his bed and toss his basketball to himself as she sat at his desk, her chin in her hands. He was telling her about some chick who said she’d write his Macbeth paper for him if he had sex with her (no brainer there) as Rachel stared longingly at a picture of Finn and him in their football uniforms with a bunch of teammates and cheerleaders.
"Yo, Berry. Were you listening to anything I just said?"
He raised his voice and startled her from her daze. She jumped slightly, turning in her chair. “Oh yeah, something about Macbeth? I love that play. One of Shakespeare’s best.”
His eyes narrowed as he raised his chin and examined her closely. After a second, he sat up abruptly and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“Rach, we gotta get you laid.”
“Um, excuse me? Noah, I recognize that your brain is hardwired to your penis-” SHE TOTALLY JUST SAID PENIS. WHY DID HE FIND THIS SO HILARIOUS? “But sex doesn’t actually solve everyone’s problems. In fact, more often than not it just makes things more complicated.”
“And that, my friend, is what I call an untruthitude.” He set his basketball on his pillow and turned back to her. “Look, I’m just trying to help you out here. I don’t know if you knew this, but I’m very in tune with the female body. And yours is practically beating me to death with all its simmering horniness.”
That was actually a bit of a stretch. It was less the female body he was in tune with, and rather…Just his dick.
“Please don’t use that word, I find it grotesque.” She paused for a second, looking anywhere but at him, “However. You make a valid point. Maybe I am suffering from a bit of sexual frustration, but that makes me no less appalled that you’d make a suggestion so lewd and utterly preposterous. You know I’ve taken a vow of celibacy in honor of Finn.”
“Which is such bullshit.”
“To someone like you, maybe, but to someone like me, it’s highly symbolic.” She took a deep breath and raised her chin. “It represents the high school struggle: love strangled by circumstance. The doomed fate of a future never to be; a future cut down brutally before it’s time.” She looked back at him, the sharp hint of diva in her voice, “I don’t expect you to understand how fitting celibacy is.”
Puck and Rachel had been friends for a while now, so most of her crappy ass, melodramatic monologues were old news. But this? This was a fucking riot. Ordinarily, he’d keep his mouth shut and let her wallow in her heartache for a while, but this was too classic to pass up. He didn’t even bother to stifle the laugh that came roaring out.
“Oh my god, how do you even exist? It’s like you’re some fucking alien trapped in a human body!” When he realized she was looking at him like she would literally tear his balls off and eat them for breakfast, he coughed and quickly shut up. “Listen, Rach. High school really isn’t as hard as you make it. Now I know you dig Finn-” God, the whole world knew she dug Finn, “-and that being his friend and getting along just makes things worse, but you seriously gotta move on. I mean, you said it yourself: that he’s having this baby and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that.” Well, there was something someone could do…But that was another issue entirely. They were talking about Rachel here.
“So what exactly do you propose I do?”
“What I’ve been doing: go out there and get some ass!”
“Noah.” Her voice became soft as she glanced down at her hands. “You know I don’t approve of the way you choose to cope with your emotional stress.” When she looked back up at him, he saw genuine, unguarded concern. Lately, that look made his stomach do funny things. (And a part of him couldn’t help but wonder: if someone like Rachel, who he treated like shit for so many years, could care about him, why couldn’t Quinn?)
“I know you don’t, but just hear me out, okay?” His voice was low now too, and he was pretty sure they were on the verge of having one of their serious conversations. “Sometimes these bullshit little booty calls are all we’ve got to stay sane. If you go into it knowing it won’t last and just keep your distance, you’ll always have the upper hand. You get your needs met and you never get dumped or abandoned because you’re the one doing the dumping. If you just tried it, you’d see how it’s the perfect situation.”
Hearing him say things like that never failed to remind her how they were such opposites. They just saw life through two fundamentally different lenses. Puck was all a-good-offense-makes-a-good-defense, and she was all it-doesn’t-matter-who-wins-or-loses-its-how-you-play-the-game. (Wow, he really was rubbing off on her.)
“You know, having meaningful relationships with people isn’t such a bad thing.” He glared at her skeptically. “I know you don’t agree with my personal philosophy with respect to matters of the heart, but saving yourself for someone who actually cares about you - who you could actually have a real relationship with…”
“Okay, Dr. Phil, I get it. Let’s save the lecture for another night.”
“I’m just saying-”
“Whatever, okay? This isn’t about me anyway, it’s about you and all your horny lady vibes.”
“Why are you always so crass? I told you that word grosses me out!”
“What? It’s the truth.”
He was right.
“Well, even if I did take your advice and find myself a male companion, things aren’t that simple. Other than Finn Hudson, there are a grand total of zero guys in our school that I find even remotely suitable.”
“Berry, stop being a punk ass and admit it: it’s not that there aren’t any guys for you, it’s that there aren’t any guys who want you.”
And there it was. The moment she’d been expecting from the day they started to be “friends.” It was like he had just slapped her across the face. Hard.
“No! No, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said quickly, scooting forward on the edge of his bed as she instinctively backed away. He reached a hand out and placed it on her knee. “Come on, Rachel. You know that’s not what I meant. Dude, you’re fucking hot. Why else would I have tried to get in your pants to begin with?” Well, there was the fact that he tried to get in everyone’s pants, but still.
“If you have a point, please get to it soon.”
“I’m just saying,” he took his hand off her knee and ran it through his hair. “It’s no wonder you don’t have dudes knocking down your door…You’re kind of intense.”
“For the record, you’re doing a pretty bad job of being my friend right now.” It was official, girls were impossible. “And whatever, I’ve just been focused on my music career, but if I decided I wanted to get a boyfriend, I totally could. Easily.”
She was seriously on a roll tonight. He had to practically bite his tongue to keep from laughing.
“So, this will sound very douchey of me, but I’m just being real with you. No matter what you think, you are not a normal girl. You’re Rachel fucking Berry, for god’s sake! You sing in Glee club and get straight A’s, you wear really short skirts with really high neck sweaters, and to top it off, you don’t give a shit about what people think. You always - always - say what’s on your mind, even if it means getting Slushee'd or eating lunch alone. And even then, when anyone else would cave, you just bring an extra set of clothes to school or your iPod to lunch and it’s like nothing ever happened. Rachel, you are intimidating and weird. And you seriously freak dudes out.”
“That's ridiculous. Any sane person would say those things are impressive for a girl my age.”
“Maybe that’s what your 45 year-old dads say, but that’s not what people at school think.”
Her hands were in her lap and she was staring at them contempletively. It wasn’t like this was news to her, but to actually hear someone say it to her face was difficult to digest. She didn’t have to say anything, he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“Oh come on, stop looking like I just kicked your puppy. I’m not saying you have to change who you are. I’m just saying you have no game. But lucky for you-” He stretched his arms above his head and cracked his knuckles because that’s what manly men did, and Puck was most certainly the manliest of men. “-you’re sitting in the presence of game royalty. Hell, I invented game. So don’t sweat it, just follow these tips and I promise you’ll have so many guys trying to get with you, you’ll have to beat ‘em away with a stick.”
Taking any sort of advice from Puck seemed unwise, but a nagging voice inside of her really wanted to know the secret and actually believed he had it. She stood up and eyed him suspiciously before taking a seat next to him on his bed.
“Okay, first? You need to learn how to speak English.”
“What? I have an impeccable grasp of the English language.”
“See? That’s what I mean. SPEAK ENGLISH PLEASE.” She didn’t even need to say it, the look on her face had Noah, you are so infantile! written all over it. “Second: no talking about Glee. Or music. Or Broadway. Just stick to neutral stuff like your favorite thing off the Taco Bell Value Menu or The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Y'know, things dudes like.” She scrunched her face up and stuck her tongue out; clearly not a fan of either. “And the last, most important lesson of all…” He reached over and flicked open the top three buttons of her cardigan. “Show a little bra and you’re basically guaranteed entry into every guy at McKinley’s pants. Even the popular ones.”
Her jaw dropped and she pulled her sweater closed quickly before punching Puck in the arm.
“Ow! For such a puny girl, you punch like a man!”
“God, I don’t know why I bother with you!”
When his laughter finally died down, he reached out and turned her chin towards him. “Hey.” The softness of his tone and the lazy grin on his face was almost enough to make her forget all the ‘douchey’ things he had done and said in the last half hour. “Maybe the sweater thing was a step too far, but all that other stuff is true.”
“You mean all that stuff about me being too confident, opinionated and smart?”
“Basically.”
“Just so I get it straight: you think the only way I can get a guy is by not being me?”
“Exactly.”
She looked at him for a moment and he could have sworn there was some freaky ass, I-see-into-your-soul, Jedi mind trick shit going on. When she spoke again, she had that same concerned expression. “I’d take offense to that if you didn’t think the same thing about yourself.”
There definitely was some weird, psychic connection shit going on because he was pretty sure he never told her that, but it was totally true. He didn’t get to where he was because of his sparkling personality or love of classic rock. If he learned anything from what happened with his dad, it was that he’d never let himself feel that way again. When you give people what they want, they’re more likely to stick around. The second you let them in and show them who you really are, you give them more of a reason to hate you and bounce.
“Yeah, well.” Now it was his turn to avoid her eyes.
“Did you ever think maybe that’s why Quinn never gave you a chance? I’m pretty sure that if she knew the real you, she’d have a hard time turning you down.”
See, that’s the thing. He did show her. She was one of the only people in that whole goddamn high school he’d been real with, and still he wasn’t good enough. The night they got together, he may have made the first move because he was totally trashed and she was totally hot, but by the end, something clicked and he felt like he finally saw what he was missing. That all the sneaking glances at her when Finn wasn’t paying attention wasn’t just lust. He knew what they did that night was wrong, but he felt something he had never felt before, and when he told her that in the gym their first day back, all she did was laugh. She said a guy like him would never ever have a chance with a girl like her while she was sober, even if he weren’t her boyfriend’s best friend. Turned out he wasn’t good enough to raise his own kid even.
Which was exactly why he wasn’t ready to tell Rachel the truth about the baby yet. It was just a whole can of fucked up worms he couldn't handle. That, and also because, though he didn’t quite know it yet, he was kinda maybe starting to think that he kinda maybe had feelings for her.
“Rach, all I’m saying,” he reached out and brushed her hair out of her face. A very un-Puck thing to do, but that had become a bit of a norm lately. “Is that you could have any dude you want, you just have to get over Finn and make a choice.”
Okay, feelings were definitely there, but they were tiny. Kinda maybe.
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So yeah, Rachel really did need to get laid. Having to see Finn everyday for an extra hour as he practiced his Justin Timberlake solo (you heard right: Finn Hudson. Singing Justin Timberlake.) certainly didn’t make it any easier. As she laughed with him and danced with him and felt the steady warmth of his body by hers it became obvious that Puck wasn’t so far off when he said she needed a guy.
The annoying thing though was that she couldn’t just go tell him that. If she were to flip flop so easily, she’d never hear the end of it. For a little while, a part of her considered adopting some of his tips, but if she showed up at school wearing a v-neck sweater and singing “Back That Thang Up” instead of Babs (she could never sacrifice music altogether for the sake of relieving pent up sexual tension) what she was doing would be so obvious.
So, as she was often forced to do in matters relating to school, she ignored her feelings altogether and buried herself in her music. Or at least tried to.
See, she always knew Puck was one of the hottest guys at McKinley, but now that her hormone levels were raging at unprecedented levels, she couldn’t focus on anything else. She tried giving him two songs to play on his guitar for her when he came over, but they’d never get to the second because she’d get so distracted by…Well, by him.
Since they generally met up right after his basketball practice, he was always at his prime level of hotness, with a baggy pair of sweats slung low on his hips (oh those hips!) and a tight tee that was snug in all the right places. Finally, he let his ridiculous mohawk grow out and now he had brown, vaguely wavy (albeit short) hair on the sides of his head and this deliriously wonderful little peak down the middle, so every time she saw him, all she wanted to do was run her hands through it. She also never noticed it before, but he even smelled fantastic. It was this combination of soap, Tag, and sweaty boy, which may not sound particularly enticing, but hello! Hormonal teenager!
After a few days of daydreaming things that made seeing Puck in person really uncomfortable, she realized she needed to end the madness and come up with a real way of getting over it. Which is why she told him to come over earlier than usual.
“Okay, so get whatever it is you have to tell me out of the way now because I have a lot of questions about what we did in Geometry today.” He was pulling his sweatshirt over his head, which meant Rachel got a good five seconds of straight up abs.
“So Noah, I’ve been thinking…”
“Oh man, not thinking.”
“-I’ve been thinking about what you said last time. About me needing a…physical outlet of sorts.”
“Oh yeah? Who’s the special dude?”
“See, that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Was she going to say what he thought she was going to say?
He immediately stopped rifling through his backpack and focused his attention on her like a laser.
“First of all, I’d just like to make it clear that even though I have no future with him, I am still very much in love with Finn. And despite the fact that we don’t even say hello to each other in the hall at school, I really do value the friendship you and I have.”
Puck rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s hold off on the warm and fuzzies and just come out with it, Berry.”
“Well, I already know that you are quite proficient in the kissing arena, and since we are both obviously in love with other people, we wouldn’t have to worry about our feelings getting in the way, so I was thinking maybe you and I could…”
Was this a dream? Because he was pretty sure he’s had a recurring series of dreams just like this, except Rachel was generally wearing black lace lingerie. No, this had to be real.
“-I mean, who says friends with benefits can’t work? I think it’s a very rational, level-headed approach to our situation, actually. It could be our little reward after a long night of homework. Another little incentive of sorts.”
The tiny part of him that had yet to accept that he kinda maybe totally had a thing for this girl told him this was a really bad idea. Lucky for him, the fairly substantial part of him that lived below the waist was what made all his decisions.
“-And I mean, I’m not abandoning my values at all because it’s not like you’re just some Joe Schmoe from school; we’re friends and if I had to do this with anyone, I’d rather do it with someone I know and trust-” she was a rambling, bumbling mess of nerves, and in two quick strides, he was right there, “-and this is just so convenient given you and I already hang out so much and you’re so-”
As he pressed his lips firmly against hers, he knew this was a bad idea but didn’t really give a fuck.
TBC
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