Disclaimer: I don't own Glee.
Bump in the Road
"You've been ignoring me."
Santana crosses her arms and presses them to her chest. "Don't be so melodramatic. I have not."
She and Puck are sitting in the lobby of a hotel in New Jersey. It's uncomfortable because she hasn't led him up to her room and even more uncomfortable because he isn't trying to get there. His eyes flick toward the elevator and then toward her again, a silent prod for permission, and somehow it irritates her that he doesn't just ask what's wrong.
They are side by side on the couch with about a foot of distance between them, and it might as well be a mile. She wonders if he even tried to reach out for her if he could touch her from so far away.
He sighs. "You're making me sound like a chick. But seriously. You never answer my texts. I even called. Two whole times."
"You want a cookie?"
"Cut it out," Puck snaps. "What's going on?"
"I'm busy," she says, and it's true. She has been traveling all across the country with a company in charge of a national cheer competition, and at twenty-one years old she is exceptionally lucky to have as much responsibility as she does. It means changing cities every few days but it also means a steady income and a ticket out of community college in Ohio. "The final rounds of the competition are next week. I'm up to my ears in work, and you're not exactly my number one priority."
He scowls at her. "Are you mad at me or something?"
Yes. "No."
She's staring ahead, watching the pathetic embers in the fireplace in the lobby, but she feels his gaze searching her and then sees him drop his head in exasperation. "Fine." He shifts defensively on the couch, trying too hard to show her how annoyed he is, just short of announcing it.
She looks away from him, ignoring him, imagining that he's like a little kid and she's denying him the attention he so craves. She'll knock him out of it. She'll put him in his place. She'll—
"I'm p—"
She freezes.
"What?" he manages.
"I—" She's flustered but not enough to get caught off guard. She angles her body away from him and says, "I'm putting a lot of time into my career, is all."
"Oh, God," he says, and his whole posture sinks into the couch cushions. "Shit, Santana."
As he's sinking she shoots up rigid as a board. He laughs, a little near imperceptible chuckle, and then it grows into this breathy, almost silent croaking laugh of relief. It feels like every strained breath he draws is piercing her.
"I thought—" He cuts himself off, finishes laughing and says, "God, I thought you were going to say you were pregnant."
Her chest feels funny. Like her ribs are pushing too hard against her heart, and now she's conscious of it beating, her whole body flinching to the rhythm.
"Don't be stupid," she says under her breath.
It's so quiet that he leans in and says, "What'd you say?"
"I said, don't be stupid, Puck." She flies up from the couch so quickly his head snaps up in surprise. She stalks across the lobby, and feels his bewildered stare watching her, hears the absence of his footsteps behind her.
"Get up," she says, and he follows her to the elevator without saying another word.
They're lying in her hotel bed that night. Puck lights up a cigarette—he's been smoking since he started school on scholarship at NYU, and Santana suspects he only does it to look tough—and usually she doesn't mind, but tonight it makes her sick to her stomach. She wriggles out of the covers and sits up against the headboard. Absentmindedly he reaches out and strokes her leg, and she's thankful she thought to shave before her flight.
"Puck?"
"Mmm."
She stares at him, his eyes closed as his hands rub against her skin, the picture of contentment.
"Never mind."
They don't speak for almost a minute. Part of her is relieved he doesn't press her, but another part of her is annoyed that he doesn't care enough to. Silently she starts to brood, and he doesn't notice until he opens his eyes to put out his cigarette butt in the ashtray.
"What is it?"
"Nothing."
"Santana."
"Why would it be so bad if I were pregnant?"
"Well," he says, laughing again, raising his eyebrows as if the answer is perfectly obvious.
"Well?" She throws the word back at him like a knife.
"Well," he says again, defensive this time. "Think about it. I mean, shit. I'm going to school, you're on the road every few days, and—where the hell would we fit in a baby? I'm not going through that again."
She folds her arms across her chest. "So you don't ever want to have a baby with me."
"No, I don't!" he exclaims, and this time he shoots up in bed so the sheets all bunch around him and she's bare in the cold.
The conviction in the words cuts her, through her ribs and straight to her heart. It feels like a personal rejection. He stares at her, waiting for her to agree with him, and after his gaze has intensely focused on her for an unreasonable length of time she scoffs at him and turns her head away, disgusted.
Puck's voice is low when he speaks again. "For the love of God, Santana. If you're pregnant, you had better tell me now. Don't fuck with me."
"I'm not."
"Then what are you doing this for?"
"I thought I was."
"What?"
"I thought I was pregnant." She finally whips her head back to face him, throwing the statement at him like a noose tightening around his neck. The embarrassment is immediate and ugly, crawling like a spider up her spine, but for some reason the truth spills out of her anyway. "I took a test and it was positive. It was a mistake, alright?"
Puck leans back and sucks in a weary breath of air. He's shaking his head, his mouth open like a fish out of water. "Jesus," he says. "You didn't tell me."
"Oh, shut up," she practically spits. "You know this is exactly why I didn't tell you."
She doesn't have to look at him to know his eyebrows are scowling low enough that they're practically swallowing his eyelids. "I'm not some sort of a monster. You never even gave me a chance," Puck says defensively.
She juts her chin outward, gesturing as if to summon up the scene in the lobby: "What do you think downstairs was?"
"That wasn't fair," he says. The bed creaks and she can tell he's on his knees, moving closer to her unresponsive body. "I had no idea."
The closeness of him irritates her. She doesn't want it. "It doesn't even fucking matter, okay? I'm not pregnant. Just fuck off."
She doesn't know what she's doing. It's all the irrationality and anger and pent up angst of the past few weeks—it's some sort of revenge, it's her way of hurting him because she feels, has felt, so hurt. She wants him to leave but will be devastated if he does. She wants him to say all the wrong things so she can justify leaving him, but clings to his every word as if he can save her from herself.
There is no way to express any of this, not to Puck, who will never understand. She clenches her eyes shut and wills herself not to say anything. She wishes she had never said anything at all.
Puck isn't finished.
"Did you just bring me up here so you could fight with me about this?" he demands, and she flinches. "God, Santana, what do you want me to say? That I'd be thrilled to knock up yet another girl? That getting you pregnant is some dream come true?"
"No, Puck," she says, her voice impossibly shrill. "God damn it, just shut up about it already."
He raises his voice, too, and it stirs something deep in her chest.
"Tell me what it was you want me to say! Tell me what it is you expect from me!"
"I expect you to stay," she screams, paying no heed to the thin walls of the hotel or her proximity to his face. Her skin is blazing and itching with heat, her fingertips tingling, everything about her poised and ready to tear him apart, when all of a sudden she deflates. She sinks against the headboard and feels the bones in her body shaking. "I just needed to know you would stay," she says in a small voice.
It's a long time before he speaks again. She watches as he, too, unclenches his fists, relaxes his jaw, and takes a few deep breaths. His body finally bridges the gap between them and he presses himself against her, lets her roll her head into the crook of his neck.
"I would stay," he says finally. "Of course I would."
She looks away from him, staring holes into the shabby hotel carpeting. She should feel safe. She should feel loved. But the bitterness rises like bile in her throat, and she can't help that her skin is crawling with desperation to get out of this hotel room, to get out of his arms and out of his life.
"You wouldn't want to," she says.
"You don't know that."
She shifts uncomfortably in his grasp and he moves his body to accommodate her. She is sick with certainty and dread.
But I do.
In the morning when her head is clearer they walk down to the coffee shop in the lobby to get breakfast. He buys a pastry and she buys a black coffee and they sit at the table with a window that looks out to the cruddy interstate.
"I don't want to do this anymore," she tells him, cool and crisp and in control. "I'm traveling too much. You're a student. It's stupid."
It's different than she thought it would be. She assumed that Puck, with his all his boasting and all his pride, would leave it at that, or find some way to turn the tables so he could be the one who left. But he doesn't do that. He asks if there is someone else. He asks if there's anything he could do to fix things. He asks what he did wrong.
She tells them there is nobody else. She tells him there's nothing left to fix. And she tells him he didn't do anything.
She tells him everything but the truth.
"I guess this is good-bye, then," Puck says. He doesn't cry or anything too pathetic, which she is grateful for. She knows she is hurting him but this makes it easier, that he still isn't willing to beg. She can pretend that he'll go on with his life as if nothing ever happened between them.
She nods curtly. "Good-bye, then."
He walks out of the hotel slowly, or maybe it just seems that way. If it were different, maybe she could tear her eyes off his retreating frame and not feel a thing. If it were different, maybe her heart wouldn't lurch as the taxi pulled up to take him back to the city.
If it were different, she wouldn't be watching the father of her unborn child drive away, and with him her whole future falling to pieces.
She slides shakily back into her seat and rests her head in her hands, weary with the knowledge that the course of her entire life will be determined by this one decision, and the plague of never knowing if it was the right one to make.
End :).