Title: Smooth Operator
Author: Kris
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Rating: Hard R for beeing teenagers... and Puck
Prompt: 037. Grinding
Summary: No place for beginners or sensitive hearts
AN/Disclaimer: Not mine, it all belongs to FOX. Spoilers through "The Rhodes Not Taken". Thanks a million to running_farmer for the beta. Without her this would probably suck.
The show is over for the time being, and Rachel sinks down on one of the benches in the wardrobe with a sigh. She feels exhausted both physically and mentally. She stays there even after Mercedes and Tina ask her out for ice-cream. She tells them she needs to talk to Mr. Schuester. She doesn't, of course, and they all know it; but they take the hint and leave her to her thoughts. She waits 15 minutes - until she no longer can hear footsteps in the hallway - before she lets herself cry. Her shoulders shake with sobs she can no longer contain.
She had all these dreams when she started high school, dreams about popularity and a boyfriend, and she knows that those dreams were probably more than a little naïve but she can't help wishing that just once she could be the one to come out on top. Just once.
She starts as the door opens and when it's Puck she can't help it, she cries a little harder. Puck has never shied away from telling her how he feels about her: sometimes with a cutting comment, other times with a slushy to her face. It just figures that the one time she breaks down at school he would be the one to walk in. He stares at her with something akin to pity and it helps, because where the cold hurt of abandonment and pain was aching a white hot anger warms her up.
"What are you looking at?" she hisses, and she can't help but take a little pleasure at the startled look in his eyes from her tone.
"I just…" He didn't know there was anyone still there. He was halfway home before he realized he'd forgotten his jacket and he would have kept on driving if it wasn't for the fact that his wallet was in it. His driver's licence, too. The last thing he expects to find is Rachel Berry, least of all a crying Rachel Berry. 'Cause Rachel Berry is a lot of things, all of them annoying; but she is not a wuss, and he has never seen her cry. Not even after three slushies delivered to her face.
"What? Came to laugh at me?" She runs a hand through her hair. "Stupid little Rachel Berry who actually thought the high school quarterback might care about her."
"No! I…" He hesitates, unsure of what to say.
"I'm sure you can't wait to get out of here to tell all your little jock friends that one of you actually managed to get me to cry. That you actually tricked me into thinking a jock could ever like me."
"Rachel." His voice is strangely soft as he says her name and it unnerves her. Because he is Puck, and Puck doesn't do soft-spoken words or pity. Puck is the kinda guy that takes the downtrodden and trods some more.
"Don't 'Rachel' me." She gets up and walks over to him. He is much taller so her look of intimidation probably isn't all that intimidating but she is too angry to care.
"Is that it? Huh?" She pushes him in the chest, but he doesn't seem to notice.
"Did you guys sit in the locker-room one day and laugh about what a silly little girl I am and decided that I needed to be taught a lesson?" Her voice has a slightly hysterical tint, and she snaps for breath before continuing her tirade.
"What was it? What did I do that made you hate me so much that you have to go out of your way to make me miserable?"
"I don't hate you."
"Right, of course you don't." She looks at him with disbelief. "You were just indulging my love of slushies."
"I don't…" He pauses. "I just think you're really annoying-"
"Oh, that's just great. You make my high school years hell because I annoy you."
He hesitates before taking a step closer. "Look… about Finn."
"I don't want to talk about it." She snaps.
"I know. I just wanted to say…" He looks down at his hands. "I dunno."
Her bottom lip quivers and he knows she is about to cry again and he can't stand it when girls cry.
"Am I ugly?" she asks in a soft whisper.
"Uhm, what?"
"Am I horribly disfigured in some way, that makes men want to throw themselves under a bus rather than be with me?"
"Err… no?" He knew he shouldn't have phrased that as a question the moment he said it, but it was too late as Rachel sobbed into his shirt.
"I'll never get a boyfriend. I'll never go to a formal and in the end I will leave high school a virgin."
He patted her hair awkwardly. Rachel Berry hanging onto to him was not how he imagined this night would end, but he can't help noticing the way that her breast press against him and the slight scent of vanilla and, well, girl that surrounds her.
"I'm sure you could get a date if you really wanted to."
She lets out a disbelieving snort.
"Yeah, sure."
"Well, after that stuff you said at the celibacy club…" He grins slightly at the memory.
She rolls her eyes.
"Yeah, if I wanted to date some pervert like Jacob."
"Jacob? Who the fuck is Jacob?"
She mimics the hair. And Puck nods before almost spluttering, "Knobby asked you out? For sex?"
She nods despondently and for a second she just looks so tragically beautiful in her pain and sadness.
"I could do it." The words are out of his mouth before he can think about it.
"What?" She looks at him like he just grew a second head.
"I could go out with you," he insists. 'Cause the more he thinks about Rachel Berry the more alluring the idea is, a secret romp with the ice princess herself. Rachel Berry has been hot since she grew into her legs and stopped wearing training bras but she has always been scary in her icy demeanour.
"Thanks, but I think I would rather take my chances with Jacob the future molester than you," she laughs.
Puck frowns.
"I'm serious." And he is serious. Sometimes, very late at night, he fantasises about popping Rachel Berry's cherry. And it's gotten worse since he joined Glee club. There is just something so seductively innocent about her. And the best part is she has absolutely no idea how hot she is.
"Sure you are - you just told me how annoying you find me."
"Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't fuck you."
"Are you kidding me?"
"What?"
"You are a seventeen year old boy and I realize that means you will have sex with pretty much anything that isn't nailed down," she snorts. "But I am a girl."
"So?"
She rolls her eyes.
"Teenage girls in general do not have sex with guys that hate them."
"Why not?" He smirks.
"Uhm… because that would be…"
"Good, Berry." He interrupts her as he grinds his pelvis against her. "It would be very, very good." His hands skate over her shoulders to push her hair behind her ears. "I'm not some fumbling little virgin."
"I know." Her voice is slightly shaky.
He grins as he pulls her flush against him.
"I know how to make you feel so very good." It's funny, because he always figured he was pretty normal when it came to sex. Sure he's tried tying a girl up on occasion (it makes the old cougars wild) and his admittedly shorter-than-rumoured sex life has been spiced up with the requisite sprinkling of blowjobs and that time he fucked Mrs Wilson in the ass, but that's all vanilla compared to what occurs within the confines of his imagination. And he wants to do all of those things and so much more with Rachel Berry - including some stuff he's pretty sure is illegal in most states.
"You're filthy!" she hisses, but she doesn't pull away. and she can feel the hardness of him pressed against her.
"Sex is supposed to be filthy, Rachel. Filthy and sweaty and so damn hot you just want to do it again and again and again." he punctuates his words with a thrust.
Her eyes are slightly glazed as she looks up at him, her breaths coming in short bursts as she straddles his thigh.
"Think about it, Berry." He lowers his face until his lips are just a hairsbreadth from hers. His hot breath branding her lips in a gesture more intimate than a kiss.
"When you want someone to pop that cherry and permanently resign your membership of the chastity club, you know where to find me." His hand skims over her side trailing across her ribs and the side of he breast before he pulls away.
"Pig!" She hisses the word after him as he leaves. But his only response is a smirk and a "call me" gesture as he backs out of the door.
That night she wakes up sweaty in a tangle of linens and for the first time this year it's not Finn's name that rests on the tip of her tongue.