Getting Good at Starting Over
Feb. 20th, 2012 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
countpuckulaFor not the first time since this idea had popped into his head Puck was wondering if this whole plan was stupid. Sure, his mother had been driving him crazy, but what did he really think living with Rachel would do to him?
Alright, so here’s the story. His final year of high school should have been awesome; he should have ruled the school and flattened any punk who dared say anything about him not being a badass, but then Shelby had showed up with Beth and everything had gone to hell. She had let him see his daughter, let him spend time with her and bond with her and even fall in love with her, Shelby this time, not Beth. He loved them both and started to make up this whole little fantasy family in his head, where they would hook up for real and he would continue his pool business and they would raise Beth together. Unfortunately Shelby wasn’t down for this at all and had skipped the state again, taking his baby and his heart with her.
Of course nobody had noticed. Everyone had been so worried about Santana and Quinn and even the marble-mouthed foreigner that nobody could even understand, and Puck had just faded into the background. Then graduation came and everyone went the separate ways. Rachel and Kurt to the bright lights of New York, Quinn to Yale, Finn off to boot camp and Puck... on the long road to nowhere.
He still had his pool business, but there were only so many pools in Ohio, and only so many months that were good for swimming, so when Finn had joined the army Puck had taken his place at Burt’s garage. For the following year that was his life, making what money he could, still living with his mother, and becoming more and more like the person he had never wanted to be. Almost a year to the day since graduation it had been a fight with his sister that had finally driven it all home.
A Lima Loser. She had called him a Lima Loser. He had become what he had always swore he never would, the one person he swore he would never be like: his father. That very day he had given Burt his two week’s notice, had closed down his pool cleaning business and had made all the arrangements. Two weeks later he stood at Rachel Berry’s door, dufflebag in hand. He had buzzed all the other apartments in the building simultaneously until someone let him in so she wouldn’t know he was coming until they were face to face.
Raising his hand, he knocked on the door.
Alright, so here’s the story. His final year of high school should have been awesome; he should have ruled the school and flattened any punk who dared say anything about him not being a badass, but then Shelby had showed up with Beth and everything had gone to hell. She had let him see his daughter, let him spend time with her and bond with her and even fall in love with her, Shelby this time, not Beth. He loved them both and started to make up this whole little fantasy family in his head, where they would hook up for real and he would continue his pool business and they would raise Beth together. Unfortunately Shelby wasn’t down for this at all and had skipped the state again, taking his baby and his heart with her.
Of course nobody had noticed. Everyone had been so worried about Santana and Quinn and even the marble-mouthed foreigner that nobody could even understand, and Puck had just faded into the background. Then graduation came and everyone went the separate ways. Rachel and Kurt to the bright lights of New York, Quinn to Yale, Finn off to boot camp and Puck... on the long road to nowhere.
He still had his pool business, but there were only so many pools in Ohio, and only so many months that were good for swimming, so when Finn had joined the army Puck had taken his place at Burt’s garage. For the following year that was his life, making what money he could, still living with his mother, and becoming more and more like the person he had never wanted to be. Almost a year to the day since graduation it had been a fight with his sister that had finally driven it all home.
A Lima Loser. She had called him a Lima Loser. He had become what he had always swore he never would, the one person he swore he would never be like: his father. That very day he had given Burt his two week’s notice, had closed down his pool cleaning business and had made all the arrangements. Two weeks later he stood at Rachel Berry’s door, dufflebag in hand. He had buzzed all the other apartments in the building simultaneously until someone let him in so she wouldn’t know he was coming until they were face to face.
Raising his hand, he knocked on the door.
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Date: 2012-02-21 01:01 am (UTC)But through it all, there'd been Finn. Losing Nationals because of their kiss should have been a sign, really, that she was hanging on to something that wasn't meant to be. But she loved Finn and love is supposed to conquer all. Love is supposed to be enough. So even against her better judgement, she'd agreed to marry him. She'd come so close, too. Until, "...and while I'm in basic training...".
Wait, what?
Finn had not only talked to a recruiter, but had decided to join the Army (he was almost done with his application process, he'd said) without saying anything to Rachel. His vegan, pacifist fiancee. Well. Rachel Berry is no one's war bride, or widow and New York Penthouses don't have widow's peaks. So that had been it. The wedding dress was returned, the ring is God knows where (because Finn wouldn't take it so Rachel flushed it. It was too big anyway). And for once, she'd done something for herself and moved on.
Which, to be honest, she's very happy about. Her apartment is perfect, tiny and nicely decorated (not entirely in stars, thank you very much), she's maintaining a 3.9 GPA while auditioning and hanging out with Kurt and Santana (yes, Santana Lopez) and now Blaine in her spare time. Currently, though, she's lounging on her couch, hair pulled back lazily, wearing a UCLA sweatshirt (stolen from her Daddy) and a pair of loose jeans (yeah, she's wearing jeans now) when she hears a knock on the door.
Which, ya know, not weird. She's friends with the older couple downstairs (she sang at their 50th anniversary dinner and now they bring her leftovers whenever they have them because she's kind of leaving the Vegan thing behind) and the young lady next door has two lovely little boys that she babysits when she needs the extra cash. So, closing her textbook, she pads barefoot across the hardwood and swings her door open to-
"Noah." Now, don't get her wrong. Puck's a good friend. He's one of the few people she kept up with that were still in Lima when she left. They talk pretty often, since Hannah calls when she needs "girl talk" still and Rachel feels weird talking to Hannah and not Puck. But...he was also living in Lima the last she checked. When she sees the duffel bag, though, she immediately moves to let him in. "How long?" It's not even a question of if he needs a place to stay or not. It's not a question of if she'll let him. It's only a question of how much more food she'll need to pick up and if she'll need to call her landlord.
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Date: 2012-02-21 01:20 am (UTC)His first instinct, of course, was to throw out something entirely inappropriate, but seeing as he wanted to crash at her place, offering to show her just how long he was probably wasn’t the best way to get in invite. It might work on other women, but not Rachel Berry.
“I, um... I don’t know,” he replied, rubbing the back of his neck as he stepped inside. “Just until I get a job and can afford my own place.” Surely that couldn’t take long, right? He had... well, he had some skills of some sort that someone would find appealing.
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Date: 2012-02-21 01:32 am (UTC)The couch is fairly large and comfortable, but he could be here for at least a month (probably more, given the job market) and there's no way that's going to be comfortable for more than a couple nights. She has a spare room, but right now it's just kind of empty. She's been using it to practice her choreography and such, but she can use the studio at school for that if need be. "I...uhm. Well. You're welcome to the couch. But you should call Santana and see if you can borrow her bed for the spare room."
Because Santana is crazy and very particular, so she has a bed sitting in storage that she'd bought for her dorm room because she wasn't "sleeping on that hard plastic prison shit" that she'd only used for 3 months before she decided she didn't want to go to jail for murdering her roommate and moved off campus and had her old queen-size shipped from home.
"What...uhm. Did something happen, Noah?"
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Date: 2012-02-22 09:17 pm (UTC)Or that’s what he would have been thinking had he been thinking at all.
“Sure, why not? You can’t seem to stop talking about how awesome it is, so why shouldn’t I get in on some of that action?” Puck replied, dropping his dufflebag beside the sofa. Couch surfing was never ideal, but he had never really been one to care about privacy (it was hard to when you had to change in front of an entire football team) so it was no big deal. It was surprising, though, to hear that Rachel not only kept in touch with Santana, but seemed to be on very good terms with the Latina.
Now there was an option he hadn’t considered. Maybe he should have asked to scrash with Santana; there was an arrangement that could have been... mutually beneficial to both of them. She never said as much, but Puck was pretty sure that she wasn’t a full on lesbian and totally swung both ways. She definitely would for him, at least, of that he was certain.
“Happen? Nah, nothing happened,” he said quickly, turning back around to face Rachel again. “I just realised I’m too much of a stud to still be living with my mom.”
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Date: 2012-02-22 11:43 pm (UTC)Kinda. But Noah's the kind of guy who'll tell you anyway.) so she can't imagine that he would just up and leave an easy kind of life that seemed to suit him just because New York seemed "awesome".Rachel and Santana came up on a...very tentative friendship last year, and upon hearing that she was going to Columbia, she and Kurt thought that it'd be good for the three of them to keep in touch. Mean though Santana may be, it was always kind of unspoken that if the three of them ever really needed each other, they'd stick together. Like a smaller version of the New Directions. With less incest, given the sexuality of their members never quite lined up.
But Santana only had one bedroom. A loft, to be exact. And ever since the roommate incident, she'd been iffy about having people in her space, not that she was entirely comfortable with it before. So Rachel's pretty sure Santana would have referred him to Rachel or Kurt first until he had absolutely no where else to go.
"...Right. So you moved hours away? Instead of staying in Lima where you were making decent money?"
And having all the sex you wanted with the Desperate Housewivesno subject
Date: 2012-02-23 12:15 am (UTC)“Maybe money isn’t everything,” he tried to throw back casually, passing Rachel and heading for the door again. Opening it, he stepped out into the hallway to grab the guitar case he had left leaning against the wall outside. “Come on, Rach. You know how boring Lima can be,” he continued talking as he carried the case back inside. He had decided to leave his video games home, because while Rachel might let him crash with her for a few weeks if he was looking for work he knew there was no way she would let him sit on her couch and play games all day. There had been no way, though, that he would leave his guitar. It was his most prized possession, one of the few things he owned that he truly cared about, and hey, if he couldn’t find a job he could always play on the streets somewhere like that Naked Cowboy dude.
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Date: 2012-02-23 12:20 am (UTC)"Well. I was...just about to order dinner." Because he doesn't want to talk about why he came and she's learned by now that she can't force anything out of him, so she's unsure what to talk about now.
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Date: 2012-02-23 12:34 am (UTC)Still, even Puck knew this would not be the end of the interrogation. She was letting him off the hook for now, but she would bring it up again and again until he told her the truth, which he would... someday. Maybe. Just not now.
“Great, I’m starving!” he replied, fixing her with a wide grin as he flopped down unceremoniously on the sofa. “What are we having?”
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Date: 2012-02-23 12:43 am (UTC)And she wonders what could have been drastic enough to make him do so so suddenly.
Rolling her eyes, she moves to sit back down in her spot, reaching for her cell phone on the coffee table. "Thai. Objections?"
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Date: 2012-02-23 11:55 pm (UTC)“Nope,” Puck replied, lacing his fingers together behind his head. “You know I like it hot.” For a brief moment he let his eyes roam around the apartment with a mixture of awe and jealousy. It must be nice to have two rich dads would could put her up with a two bedroom in New York City. From what he had heard he would be lucky to be able to afford a room in a place this size with three other people, and even then he’d probably have to work two jobs.
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Date: 2012-02-24 12:12 am (UTC)After placing their orders, she sits the phone back down on the table. "Do you want to put your stuff in the spare room? I mean, I know you'll be sleeping out here, but you'll have more space that way."
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Date: 2012-02-24 12:35 am (UTC)“Yeah, sure,” he replied to her question, getting back to his feet. She probably just wanted his stuff out of the way herself, her place was incredibly clean and if he even opened his duffle bag and started looking for anything in it it would suddenly look like a bomb went off out here. Puck didn’t do clean and tidy well.
Picking up his stuff, he opened the door and went into the first door he came to, which just happened to be her bedroom.
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Date: 2012-02-24 12:52 am (UTC)Standing, Rachel moves to follow him so that she can direct him to the guest room and show him where the bathroom is, but he opens the door to her bedroom before she can say anything. Moving behind him, she watches his reflection in the mirrored wall directly across from him, folding her arms.
"That's my bedroom. Obviously."
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Date: 2012-02-24 01:16 am (UTC)This room, though, seemed a bit more mature than the last, or at least he thought it might be from the doorway. “That’s a lot of mirrors, Berry. Bit of a kink?” he asked, raising his eyebrows as he threw a look back over his shoulder at her. Now was probably a good time to just back out and allow her her privacy, but this was Puck. Instead he stepped into the room for a better look, his eyes moving upwards.
He just had to know if the mirrors extended to the ceiling as well.
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Date: 2012-02-24 02:05 am (UTC)Just don't check the back of the bathroom door 'cause there's a mirror there too. But the room is more mature, dark furniture and pale yellow sheets."Are you done?" She asks, dropping her hands to her hips. It's a little weird, having Puck in her room like this again after all these years. And a little nerve-wracking too, considering what usually always happens whenever Puck's in her bedroom.
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Date: 2012-02-28 12:53 am (UTC)“Yeah,” was all he managed to reply, turning back to leave the room but she was somehow effectively blocking the doorway, or as well as her tiny frame could at least. “Nice digs,” he offered, shifting the dufflebag up over his shoulder.
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Date: 2012-02-28 01:13 am (UTC)"Thank you." She stands awkwardly for a second once he turns towards her, waiting for him to probably make a vulgar joke of some sort. But then she realizes that she's blocking his exit and steps out of the room, leading him to the room directly behind it. "This is the spare room."
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Date: 2012-02-29 11:19 pm (UTC)Finally Rachel stepped back and led him to the next room. It wasn’t a bad size, though it probably looked bigger due to the fact that there was practically nothing in it.
“Why did you get two bedrooms if you didn’t plan on having a roommate?” he asked, walking inside and setting his stuff down in the centre of the room. Unless she’d had a roommate and didn’t anymore. Weren’t her and Kurt planning on getting a place together so they could chase their dreams and braid each other’s hair or whatever they did when they were alone? Maybe he should have asked more questions, or at least paid more attention whenever she got him on the phone.
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Date: 2012-03-01 03:40 am (UTC)"I was. Kurt was supposed to join me at first." She tells him. "But then he got an extra scholarship and could afford his own place, and I'd already fallen in love with this place from the pictures online. I figured I'd just use the spare room as a place to practice dance." Which is exactly what she's been doing.
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Date: 2012-03-02 10:07 pm (UTC)“Kind of hard to live with his brother’s ex, huh?” Puck spoke without thinking as he looked around the room. Only when he looked back at Rachel did he realise that this maybe wasn’t the best thing to bring up to someone he was looking to bum a room off of for a while. “Works out great for me, though,” he tried to smooth things over with a joke and a grin.
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Date: 2012-03-02 10:15 pm (UTC)Folding her arms, she stays in the doorway, raising one eyebrow as he tries to smooth things over. "Yes, I suppose. I'll go call Santana for you. Maybe we can get the bed delivered tonight." And with that, she leaves him to it, heading back into the living room to get her phone. As much as she and Noah are friends, she's just really bothered by the fact that he throws around her and Finn's break-up so casually.
Not that he's not casual with everything...not that she misses Finn (much. Mostly, it's all general boyfriend things she misses. Nothing Finn specific). But still.