Title: Nothing Really Matters To MeRating: PGFandom: GleeWords: 492Characters: Quinn, Puck.Summary: "It doesn't matter." "Really?"Notes: For gleeverse's challenge 35. Go join. Ask for Team New Directions, because we're awesome like this. Be sure to tell them I sent you as well.
She's standing in the doorway between her old bedroom and the pink-tiled bathroom she used to share with her sister. She's thinking of how odd and wonderful and painful it is to be back here again, her old body just granted back to her, and without her father and without Mercedes or Puck in the next room. She's all by herself again. It might just be breaking her heart.
She jumps as she hears a rap against the window, nearly tripping over the leg of her desk. She isn't quite used to being back yet. She glances in the direction of the bay window overlooking the front yard and is greeted with a familiar face, "Oh my god." She hurries over to unlatch the window before her mother hears and he stumbles in. "What are you doing here?"
"Well," Puck rubs the back of his head sheepishly. "It's not like I have anywhere else to go. My mom keeps weeping about how I'm just like my father…" He pauses, staring at her for a moment. "I wanted to talk to you."
"Oh," She knew he wouldn't just let her go. Here it comes, I can be a good father. I want to be with you. We can be a family. It didn't help that the social worker had made it so abundantly clear that she could renege the adoption if she wanted to anytime in the first month.
"We kind of got interrupted earlier," He hints and she turns away from him.
"It doesn't matter." She whispers under her breath. She suddenly gets a vision of him and her mother picking out color schemes for a nursery and her stomach feels sick.
"Really?" His voice is hurt, rejected, and she can feel her heart sink a little.
"Of course," She faces him again, smiling tightly. "Everything's taken care of."
He take a breath, and then looks straight into her eyes, vulnerable, "I told you that I loved you."
"Oh," She can feel her composure dripping away.
"Oh?" His face falls. "That's it?"
"I…I…" She struggles with her words, watching him carefully. "I really don't want to be alone tonight."
He studies her, and she can see him chewing the inside of his lip. "Are you really trying to buy me off with sex?" His voice is small, awkward. And she almost laughs at the irony of it.
Instead she smiles at him, taking his hand lightly. "I wouldn't be allowed to even if I wanted to. I gave birth today, remember?"
"And you don't want to," He's staring at her hand in his, as if trying very hard not to ruin this moment.
"Just stay with me, okay?" He nods and watches her climb into bed carefully.
He follows her in very cautiously, resting his hands right above her stomach as if to keep from touching any sore area, "I meant it."
"I know," She murmurs to him, already falling deep asleep.