Genre: Romance

Paring: Rachel/Puck (Slight Fuinn/mentions of Finchel and Quick)

Notes: Set in season one.

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I don't own Glee.

Summary: Destiny is crafted in the hands of its dwellers.

…

A tip-toe off the edge

…

…

…

They meet in the middle; on top of the bleachers in the rare occasion of McKinley High's football team winning a match. There's confetti on the space Rachel takes a seat; red and sparkly white. Her feet scrape leftovers aside, creating a center in which the dirty, soda soaked granite is visible. There she puckers her toes, pushes the insteps of her feet together. She heaves her head up to the sky, the orange glow of the sun darkening. It's after five and the field is clear of students and teachers, by now they must all have found shelter in Santana Lopez's house, drinking down the sweet taste of victory with the titillation of champagne bubble's and cheap, bitter beer.

They will have to do without the source of said victory, the boy with the sweaty jersey he hadn't bothered to pull off and his, short, cropped Mohawk flattened by condensation. He sits two rows down, but the spaces in between them aren't nearly large enough to conceal the angry pull of his eyebrows from her sight.

She stares long and hard at the number twenty at the back of his shirt until her eyes start to sting. Then she looks away, back to the sky and clearing her throat.

He doesn't respond, not a trepidation shifting through his body or the twitch in his head in alert, so she speaks. It's what she knows best. She picks out the hunch in his shoulders and recalls the vacant look in his eyes when the Blonde, head cheerleader ran into the hands of her tall, quarterback boyfriend. Rachel searches her mind; claws through vivid details of movies and books with the perfect couple weaving through the waters of High School and realizes Noah may not fit in that ideal.

''Y—you were great out there, Noah,'' she starts; despite of the opposite he may think. It was him who assisted in their final score, it was him who threw the ball far enough for their quarterback to reach up, catch and go flying to the finish line.

Her attempts at consoling him are futile, she knows. His silence wavers around them and minutes go by without any of them speaking. She keeps tugging her hair behind her ears. It's autumn already and the wind is strong this time of the year.

As his voice finds its way past his lips the wind has become considerably weak enough to simply blow sliver of strands of brown hair across her cheekbones, ''Isn't Zuko 'posed to get the chick?''

''I'm sorry?'' She asks, because she really can't quite follow his train of thought at the moment.

''You know,'' he growls a little annoyed, exhausted and dropping his shoulders and Rachel is strongly aware that he's rolling his eyes even though she can't see en face. ''Zuko—Danny Zuko, don't you chicks hold Grease marathons every Friday if nothing better comes 'round?''

She huffs at his indication. ''You are mistaken, quite dearly,'' though she does know Danny Zuko and she has seen Grease at least twice in her life time, but that's beside the point. One can't expect a sudden subject jump to be easily caught when all there lingered before was their acute silence. ''In addition… I hold Funny Girl marathons on Fridays, Saturday's are Breakfast club.''

''Fuck, I don't actually care, Berry.''

She curls and uncurls her fingers making her nails scrape against old wood. The sensation is unpleasant so she stops and takes a deep breath.

''What were you trying to explain, then?''

There's movement underneath his shirt, his shoulder blades seem to coil and his spine bents just the slightest. She leans forward.

''He got the girl, didn't he? Zuko was a bad-ass motherfucker and he snatched up the goody-two-shoes virgin in a day, and that's that.''

It wasn't really over. Danny still had social standards to look upon and he took the dirty road away from Sandy more than once. Thereby, Rachel wouldn't go as far as claiming Quinn Fabray goody-two-shoes material. Celibacy with counted. Maybe that was why Noah was failing; their story just wasn't the same.

What about Rachel, though? Shouldn't she have Finn by now, shouldn't he have been chasing her breathlessly and drunk on love?

''Those stories are bull,'' she whispers, but they're close so he must hear her. There's bitterness on her tongue not put there by encasing beer. ''In real life we get what we fight for.''

''Finn didn't fight for her.''

She winces. Her stomach clenches and she's not sure why.

''It goes both way,'' she tells him. ''She needs to fight for him, too.''

''Then why the hell does he still have her,'' his voice raises and she shuts her eyes and leans back against the fury that licks across his skin and reaches wild into the air.

''I don't know.''

Real life is not supposed to be fair. Aspiring stars get bullied in High School and handsome guys walk past the geeks and no one turns the first time around to get a good look at their actions. Plenty keep doing what they do even if it hurts; when it makes them an outcast or when that guy's gaze glazes over them and they mess up their names or make up their own (Janet). It's silly, now that she thinks about it underneath the roseate sky and in the presence of the infamous Puck, how they keep holding on to something that only serves to hurt.

''Do you love her,'' she asks him, because she wants to know if it's worth it, the hurt. If it's worth it like swallowing insults, because she will be a star someday—and that'll show them—or if it's okay to cry oneself to sleep, because that one guy's lips touched yours, and left without a further explanation—and God that one stung.

The question goes unanswered. Noah rises deftly. It's now that she sees, without his body blocking the floor before him between the bleachers, his own backpack. She allows her gaze to trail over him and then to his eyes and she likes that they are hazel. Not green or brown, but something in between and a little more.

''I won this game,'' he states, and she nods. ''That calls for celebration, right?''

She nods again, watching him pick up his bag pack and stride towards the steps. Halfway through his ascend Noah looks at her, one eyebrow quirked and jutting his chin towards the door.

''You coming?''

She rises and follows him.

…

They end up on the back of his truck staring at a sky that has gone dark blue after hours of driving in silence. There's a bottle of clear whiskey or vodka or water tinged with alcohol, she does not know, because her mind's a little fuzzy and he keeps passing it to her and she keeps swinging it down her throat and passing it back, neither holding in. They're halfway through the bottle and she's watching the stars she so fondly compares herself to and for a fleeting, rejuvenating moment she can't really understand why she wants to be a star. Sure it sparkles and its metaphor has been around longer than she's been catching breath, but stars are stones and scientists say it's just the light reflecting; only ghosts of pasts and they've been gone for longer than a blink.

Still, she reaches for them. She wants to be a star. Once, they were vibrant and sparkly, and a ghost only proves that they were real.

She looks at Noah—Noah Puckerman, bully extraordinary with his chiseled jaw and his cupid bow circling the head of the bottle. They've been sharing spit. The thought makes her giggle.

He looks at her from the corner of his eye, shakes his head. He must think she's crazy, Crazy-Berry and her smiles—Christ.

''I have a theory,'' Noah with his perfect cupid's bow says. Rachel's head falls back, face directed to the sky and leaning her upper body weight on the flat of her palms. She bears the ridges of her esophagus to the stars. She's one of them, after all. They're in the dead of night, drunk on poison and it's here the hypothesis come without restraint. ''You know how the stories get the geek chick to fall for the top-jock, the top-chick to fall for the bad-ass motherfucker and the bad-ass motherfucker to fall for the top-chick?''

She hums, it sounds like most High School romances she's read about and seen on TV.

''The geek and the bad-ass never hang,'' he concludes.

She blinks a little. ''She's all that,'' she states.

She sees Noah shake his head from the corner of her eyes. ''Dude was a top-jock.''

''Mean girls.''

''Dude was an ass, not a bad-ass.''

''Bring it on.''

''Seriously?''

Yeah, okay, she did not try on the last one.

''Breakfast club is the all-time example,'' Noah says.

''Allison wasn't a geek,'' disturbed was more like it. ''Just… Peculiar.''

''Insane, s'what you mean.''

She thinks it's a little bit funny that Noah has such an extensive knowledge of sappy High School movies.

''Pray tell, oh-wise-tale teller-of-romanticism, don't the geek and bad-boy actually gallivant. I am curious.''

Noah shrugs, looks at her so the stars are forgotten and his eyes are not. ''They've got a lot in common… They don't fit anywhere.''

She creases her eyebrows, lips slightly parted, ''isn't that plenty of reason for them to hang out?''

''It is,'' he says. ''I just don't think… They actually know it, you know? Too lost up in what they want, can't see what they deserve.''

This story makes her sad. Her stomach twists nervously and she sits up better, her skirt sliding up her thighs as she reaches for the bottle and takes a small sip.

''Being with something that you want ain't always right,'' he continues, looking away. ''And being with something you deserve, that's right, you know? It could become something that you want,'' a corner of his mouth twirls up and falls rapidly, his hazel eyes darkening like the sky. ''But you know what happens when you hold onto something that ain't right for you? It kills you. It's going to gut you open and spread your organs all over the place. That's the thing with Quinn. I'll be holding onto a chainsaw and I'm trying to fix these buttons but they're broken. I'm trying to cool it down while it's drilling and slicing away at my skin. I'm holding on that chainsaw real close to my chest and my fingers are fumbling and the blade is running and my blood is splattering all across, and my shirt is being torn like my chest, but I'm still. Holding. On.''

''That's graphic,'' she murmurs, shifting a little closer to him, but she has her lips pressed together in sympathy, because she understands. ''And unhealthy.''

''I don't love her,'' he says, answering her previous question from a different setting. ''I like the idea of her.''

''Yeah.''

''What about you and Hudson,'' he asks. There's a faint tremor in his voice, but as she looks up at him, she doesn't spy a crack in his face.

She sighs, hunches her shoulders, cradling the bottle in her hands and holding it to her chest. ''I love the idea of him,'' she admits. ''But I know he's not good for me.''

She reaches for Noah in the middle of the night, then, fingers sliding over cool metal, and she finds a hand in return that does not shield away. So, neither does she.

…

Afterwards, the bottle is empty and she ends up sleeping on his chest on the bed of his truck. Her hands are fisting his shirt and there's salivate on her cheek that she wipes away hastily with the back of her hand. When she leans up a bit he's still sleeping, one arm curled underneath the back of his head and the other tightly around her waist.

She snuggles closer.

…

On Monday Noah picks her up for school.

He has his bag pack slung across his shoulder and he's listening to her ramble off about Breakfast club. Saturday has come and past and Noah had come over to watch her nightly movie routine. There were some things they couldn't agree about. Like, Andrew was most certainly not a wuss, and that Captain Crunch with pixie sticks on bread would be disgusting (Noah said he had tried it and it wasn't that bad). But there were two things they could find common ground on, Allison was way cuter before the whole make-over and there was something utmost endearing about Brian Johnson and his pursuit to acceptance of his own character.

They pass Finn and Quinn and Rachel doesn't know whether they are looking at them or not. There's the whole student body around them and some eyes up ahead do linger.

It's when Noah smiles down at her that she realizes she doesn't care.

…

Let their ghosts pass them by.

…

…

…

…

…

End