Taking Chances- Part 1
If you had asked Puck where he spent his Friday nights, his answer sure as hell wouldn't have been "Rachel Berry's house". And yet, that was where he found himself. Right now he was standing in the doorway of her kitchen. Her dads had opened the door for him on their way out. He watched her washing her hands, wearing the same dark blue dress she had worn when she tearfully sang to Finn...
Wait. Hold the fuck up.
Was it...shorter? Jesus Christ. Had she grown or something? Actually, now that he looked more closely, it was a slightly different dress, with ice blue capped sleeves and morenof a pleated skirt...Why was he even paying attention? He wasn't exactly a details guy. The more pressing question was why he was there in the first place. Rachel, in her usual take-charge way, had created a sign up list for baked goods to sell. All the profits were to go towards Burt Hummel's exorbitant hospital bills. Santana and Brittany had signed up to make lemon bars together, Mercedes had signed up for distributing the goods at her church, Tina and Mike for green tea cheescake, and Finn and Artie for pudding.
She had, of course, asked Finn to help her first, but Puck had overheard him mumble something about always burning stuff. She had looked so crushed after his refusal that Puck found himself offering to help before he had even realized what he was doing. The duo had completely different reactions: she with a dazzling smile, and Frankenteen with a scowl.
"You came!" she exclaims cheerily, breaking him out of his reverie and hurrying towards ensues in their close proximity. Her hands are resting lightly on her slim hips, arms tense, as if they want to release into a hug. His hands are firmly in his pockets.
"Yeah," he settles for, "said I would, didn't I?"
"Well, thank you," she says, finally deciding to stand a little on tiptoe and kiss him on the cheek.
All things that rise must fall, so she places her heels back on the limestone floor. Puck can feel a cool imprint on his cheek. He caught of her chapstick when she kissed him, so now he'sgoing to smell like fruit all day. Fan-fucking-tastic.
She turns around and starts getting bowls and such out of the cupboards.
"The recipe for cookies is on the fridge. Could you get the ingredients?"
He complies, wrinkling his nose at all the tofu and rabbit food in the fridge.
"So I have a plan for the baking..."
Of course she does.
"Well, first I made a playlist so that our work will go by faster," she says, gesturing to a small, round table topped by a vase filled with wildflowers and iPod speakers.
"...Kay."
"I made it for you. You said you were interested in singing pieces by Jewish artists, so... I thought I'd help. And, um(she darts to where the mixing bowls are), I thought we could each make separate two dozen batches at the same time for efficiency."
"Cool. Works for me."
He's actually kind of surprised that she remembers his Billy Joel speech.
"Including," she says with a too-bright voice, "Billy Joel, to help you with all the new girls you've been making out with lately."
All he offers in response is an eyeroll. There haven't actually been many girls recently...but SHE doesn't have to know that.
"I'll be right back," she says.
He saunters over to the iPod, selects "Playlists", and scrolls through. It contains about 5 million. She WOULD have a soundtrack for every emotion and index finger rests on "Jewish Songs For Noah". He shouldn't snoop, but it's so freaking tempting...He ends up scrolling through the list. "Finn" comes up, of course. Whatever. So does Jesse St. Jackass..."Jealousy"..."Love Songs"..."Mom, Where Are You?"
..."Noah"?
The had only gone out for a week. Their break-up hadn't really affected her. Or, at least, it seemed like it hadn't.
He opens the playlist with no hesitation whatsoever
"Sweet Caroline"... just the title of the song transported him to the day he had proved himself to her...and to the sting of disappointment when she dumped him. Which didn't mean that he LIKED her, or some dumbass thing like that. It was more that someone had chosen Finn over him for the thousandth freaking time. Finn won everything: girls, games, teacher approval, mentors. He never really seemed to appreciate any of it.
"Run Joey Run""Total Eclipse Of The Heart""Beth""Unbeautiful""Almost Lover""Heartbreak, Warfare""Girl Next Door""Iris""Use Somebody""That's What You Get""Happy""Why Can't I""Tangled Up In Me"...
He scrolls through the remaining playlists to "Top 25 Most Played"...and finds that Sweet Caroline is in the Top 5, and a few others from "Noah" are dispersed within the playlist as files the songs to memory and switches it to the Jewish playlist when he hears her light footsteps.
The Cars blast from the speakers.
I don't mind you coming here/And wasting all my time/'Cause when you're standing oh so near/I kinda lose my mind...
"Sorry it took so long, it was hard to find a manly apron," she says, handing him a plain, white apron similar to the one she's wearing.
He's momentarily distracted by the fact that her hair is up in a long ponytail and the way it swishes between her shoulder blades when she walks, baring more of her he realizes that he's holding an apron and laughs.
"Don't think so, B."
"Noah!" she says petulantly. "You'll stain your letterman jacket, and then your poor mother will have to get them out by hand.
He shrugs, and she legitly stamps her foot and makes some sort of squeal/growl noise that he laughs at.
"You are impossible," she says, coming too close for comfort again.
He braces himself for awkwardness- will she girlishly slap him or just a scream a mile a minute in his face?- but she ends up doing she puts her hands at the top of his hard chest, his brain does something odd. It feels as if it's about to explode, if he's being honest. It's...sizzling with all this energy, like a summer storm. He's pretty sure his brain DOES explode when she pulls the zipper down on his letterman jacket and pulls it off his shoulders, unintentionally smoothing his arms with her delicate hands.
This shit is not comfortable, and apparently the feeling is mutual, because she casts her eyes down and mumbles, "There you go. I'll go hang this up."She goes into the hallway again, leaving Puck feeling vulnerable, raw, and cold in his thin, gray t-shirt.