A/N: This includes spoilers for "Yes/No".
"Mr. Schue? I have something I'd like to sing," Rachel says as soon as the bell has rung. "A suggestion for your proposal for Ms. Pillsbury."
As soon as Puck sees the way that she looks at Finn, he knows that whatever she's planning to sing doesn't have anything to do with Schue and Bambi, and he doesn't want any part of it. "Can I go to the bathroom?" he asks, standing and making to step off the riser without waiting for an answer.
"After Rachel sings, Puck," Schue says without turning around.
Rachel, who would usually shoot him one of those hurt looks that she reserves for when she thinks people don't care about her, doesn't even glance in Puck's direction. She smiles at Brad, then perches on the stool, smoothing her pink dress over her thighs and twisting her fingers in the ends of her hair that she's pulled over her shoulder. He knows, from watching her, that she's adjusting the way the curl falls there.
He hates that he knows that.
He's stuck here, so he leans back into the corner and pushes his sleeves up a little. It's always hot in the choir room because the girls are always cold. It's their own fault for ignoring the fact that it's January and dressing the way they do, but Schue's a fucking pushover and turns up the thermostat instead of telling them to suck it up or wear something with some goddamn sleeves.
As soon as he hears the opening notes, he knows what she's singing, and even though he hates this song, he figures it can only be improved by Rachel singing it. It wouldn't be the first time she's sung something fucking terrible and made him like it. But the whole idea of this song, and specifically Rachel singing it, grates on his nerves. With or without Finn - or anyone else, for that matter - Rachel is going places, and she's going to be Rachel Berry no matter what happens.
She puts so much of herself into everything that she sings that it's hard to tell if she really believes that she would be less or whatever without Finn, but Puck hopes that she knows that it's not true.
That girl doesn't need anyone to make her great.
Still, he finds himself almost smiling as she sings. She's just so fucking sincere, and she sounds so good, and he can't help himself.
Finn gets up out of his chair when Rachel finishes singing, and no one notices that Puck slips behind the band to walk out of the room when Rachel leans up on her toes to kiss him. He doesn't actually need to go to the bathroom, but he takes the excuse to get the hell out of the choir room, grateful for the excuse when he hears Santana start talking just as he crosses the doorway, undoubtedly to say something bitchy.
"I'll get it!" Puck calls to Abby when the doorbell rings, not that he needs to worry about her volunteering. Their mom is gone, so she's on the computer in the office doing whatever. He isn't supposed to let her sit in there all night, but he's almost positive that she isn't looking at porn, so he's not too worried about it. As long as she's in there, she's leaving him alone.
He sets the Coke he just got from the kitchen on the coffee table on the way to the door. It's probably a good thing too, because he might have dropped it when he opened the door and saw Rachel standing there. She hasn't ever just shown up here for no reason.
"Hi," she says when he just blinks at her. "May I come in?"
"Yeah." She waits there for him to close the door and lead her into the living room where he was mostly ignoring a basketball game while he worked on his study guide for The Crucible. She smiles a little when she sees his books spread out there, but she doesn't say anything about them, unbuttoning the front of her pristine white coat.
"Are you home alone?" she asks, letting the coat slip down her bare arms.
He shakes his head. "Abby's here. Mom's visiting Nana," he tells her, anticipating her next question. "What's up?"
She lays her coat over the back of the rocking chair in the corner, then perches on the edge of the couch, smoothing her hands over the skirt of her blue dress, arranging it just so. "Did Finn tell you about his dad?" she asks, ignoring his question.
He assumes that she doesn't mean the my dad was a war hero who died story that Finn's been telling since kindergarten, so Puck shakes his head.
"He didn't die in Iraq," she says quietly, looking down at her hands. "I don't know all of the details, but he died of an overdose after being dishonorably discharged. Carole told Finn the other day."
"Fuck," Puck breathes out, sitting on the couch beside her. The sound of whistles reminds him that the television is still on; he grabs the remote and hits the power button. "That's why he's been all weird the last couple of days?"
She nods. "He's questioning everything that he's ever believed about his father and who he was. He feels like everything he thought he knew was an illusion, and that's been shattered." Her eyes are sad when she looks at Puck. "I know a little bit about what it's like to find out that a parent isn't who you thought they were."
Puck's stomach twists uncomfortably when he thinks of Shelby. Rachel isn't making any sort of comment about what he and Shelby did, he knows - that isn't her style - but he can't help thinking about what a fuck up it was, all things considered. Still, things between Rachel and Shelby were fucked long before she came back to Lima with Beth. It wasn't any more a secret when Rachel's mom left than it was when Rachel found her, and everyone saw the fallout from that.
"I thought you might understand that, too," Rachel says, and Puck realizes that he's been quiet for too long, thinking about her and Shelby.
"I think I always kind of knew my dad was worthless," he says quietly, "but for a long time, I thought he was pretty badass, too. I wanted to be just like him."
"So did Finn."
"Yeah, I know." Puck can remember at least three Halloweens when Finn dressed up as a soldier back when they were kids. "Is that why you sang that song?" he asks suddenly. He feels like he's just put something together. "For Finn?"
"Yes." She brushes her fingers over the red ribbon trailing across her lap. "To remind him that he's important to me no matter what. Learning that his dad wasn't who he thought he was doesn't change who Finn is to me."
Puck almost smiles. With some context, he hates her singing that song a little less.
She goes quiet then, gazing at the floor between the couch and the coffee table and kind of wringing her hands, but he doesn't think that she's looking at it so much as through it. He doesn't know what she's thinking about, whether it's Shelby or Finn or maybe herself. He's wondering why she's here though, because he doesn't think she's telling him all of this because she knows that he and Finn are friends. There's something more here, something that she's not saying, and besides how weird it is that she's being totally quiet, he really wants to know what this is about.
"Rach?" She looks up like he startled her. "What's going on?"
She takes a breath and meets his eyes. "He asked me to marry him."
"Are you serious?" he asks, but he can tell by the look on her face that she is. "What did you say?"
He looks down at her hands when he asks the question and realizes that she isn't wringing her hands, but rather toying with her left ring finger.
Her bare left ring finger.
"I told him that I need to think about it," she answers. She presses her lips together.
The idea of Rachel and Finn getting married makes it hard to breathe, like the air in the room just got thicker, or like there's something in his chest that's keeping his lungs from expanding when he inhales.
"What are you going to say?"
"I don't know," she whispers. Her eyes are shiny with tears when she looks up at him. "I don't know what to do, Noah."
Say no.
It's an automatic response, but Puck bites it back.
"Do you want to marry Finn?" he finally asks. He's trying to be diplomatic or whatever instead of just telling her that getting married right now is a shit awful idea.
"Every time I've imagined being married, it's been to Finn," she answers quietly. "But it's always been...later. Once we've graduated from college and grown up. But things haven't ever gone the way I expected." She shrugs one shoulder. "Maybe this is the same way."
Puck doesn't think she looks entirely convinced. "Do you want to say yes?" He asks the question even though he isn't sure he wants to hear the answer.
She look sad when she says, "I don't want to say no." She squeezes her eyes shut and tips her head down so that her hair falls in her face, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap.
"That's not really the same thing," he says, trying to keep his tone as gentle as possible
There are tears in her eyes when she looks up at him. He doesn't know what to do except put his arms around her and pull her against his chest while she cries.
He starts watching her.
Well, he always watches her. He has for a while, more than he cares to admit. More than he's even willing to admit to himself, if he's being honest. It's like once he let himself get to know her a little bit, she got all up under his skin, and now he can't help but care about her.
He doesn't think that anyone who wasn't paying attention would realize that anything was different about her, but she's more quiet than usual, almost subdued. She isn't silent or anything, but she isn't volunteering her opinions about every little thing in glee, and she only talks at lunch when someone asks her a direct question. If anyone else was paying attention to her, they would realize that there's something on her mind.
Every time he sees her, the first thing he does is look at her left hand. It's fucking stupid, and he berates himself for it every time. It doesn't help. The next time he sees her, he does it again.
He's relieved every time he sees that it's still bare.
He gets all the way out to his truck after glee practice and even has the thing in gear when he realizes that he forgot to stop by his locker for his chemistry book. He'd like to just leave it there, but he has chemistry first hour and their unit study guide is due tomorrow. Puck can't afford to throw away points, so he puts the truck back in park and heads back into the building.
He glances in the choir room when he walks by out of habit, his steps faltering when he sees Rachel sitting at the piano bench. He looks at her for a moment from his place in the hallway, until he realizes that the lid is covering the keys. He debates with himself for half a second before stepping through the doorway. "Hey," he greets quietly, pushing the door most of the way closed behind him, impressed that she didn't jump at the sound of his voice. "What are you still doing in here?"
"Thinking," she answers simply. "I told Mr. Schue that I wanted to practice, so he let me stay."
Puck nods, sliding onto the bench beside her. He can see a page of sheet music lying on top of the piano. It's decorated around the edges with hearts that he knows were drawn by Brittany, which means it belongs to either her or Santana. "What are you thinking about?"
She turns her head to give him a pointed look. "You know what. I can't sleep for thinking about it."
It's so tempting to be a smart ass about this or to turn it into a joke, but he's not sure that he'll be able to handle her reaction. She'll be annoyed, which is a little hot but ultimately not worth the lecture, or disappointed, which will make him feel like shit. So instead of following his first or second instinct, he says, "You still haven't decided."
It isn't a question, so she doesn't answer.
"It's hurting him," she says. "Making him wait like this. I can tell."
"Yeah."
"I love him."
Puck lets out a breath as quietly as he can. "Yeah."
"Can I ask you something?"
She asks it like she isn't sure that he's going to say yes. "Sure."
"Did you...when Quinn was pregnant, did you ask her to marry you?"
He's shocked by the question. "What?"
"I know that, at first at least, you wanted to be a family. The three of you. I just thought maybe..." She trails off, shrugging her shoulder and looking at him like what she's saying actually makes sense.
"Well, yeah, I did, but that doesn't mean that I thought we should get married. Fuck, we were sixteen." He looks at her seriously, waiting until she meets his eyes. "You don't have to be married to be a family." He hopes that she understands that he isn't just talking about him and Quinn.
She nods slowly, looking forward again. "Right."
He can practically hear the wheels turning in Rachel's head while they sit there. He's waiting for her to say something, anything. Every other time he's seen Rachel trying to make a decision about something, however trivial it may have been, she's talked about it and forced the people around her to listen to her debate the pros and cons with herself. It's annoying in that way that only Rachel Berry is capable of being, the kind where you want to tell her to shut up, but feel bad about it as soon as you do because she gets that hurt puppy look in her eyes. But with this, she's totally silent, agonizing about it on her own.
Making Puck agonize about it with her.
He's been thinking about it, trying to decide what he'll tell her if she asks his opinion. He knows it's a bad idea to let himself get any more involved in this than he already is. He's spent too much time mixed up in Finn and Rachel's relationship, and if anything should be just between the two of them, this is it. But if Rachel asks him what he thinks she should do, Puck knows what he wants to tell her.
If she wanted to marry Finn, she would have said yes from the beginning. Even if it was conditional - I'll marry you after college, I'll marry you after my Broadway debut, or whatever the hell - she wouldn't have had to think this hard before she said yes. If she has to think about it this much, it's pretty obvious to Puck that she doesn't really want to say yes. And if she doesn't want to say yes, her only real option is to say no.
He also knows that he won't ever say any of that out loud. Not to Rachel, and not to anyone else.
He doesn't know how long it is before the silence starts to get to him. He doesn't know what to say, and he doesn't want to just get up and leave her sitting here, so he lifts the lid on the piano and starts to play. It's a song that he's pretty sure she won't recognize, a lullaby written for a girl who needs something to believe in.
He plays the song through to the end, waiting for her to interrupt to ask him what he's playing, or to say anything, really. She doesn't though, not until the last note has faded into the empty room and he's considering playing Chopsticks just so she'll roll her eyes or laugh or do something.
"I should get home," she says quietly, glancing at him. "My dads will worry if I'm late." She stands, leaving him sitting there wondering if she's told her dads about all of this while she shrugs into her coat and gathers her things.
She pauses in the doorway on her way out, looking back at Puck. "You should play piano more often, Noah," she says. "That was lovely."
He forgets about his chemistry until he's lying in bed trying to fall asleep much later that night, but fuck it.
The next time he sees her, in the hallway before class the next morning, she's holding Finn's hand and there's a ring on her finger.
It's all anybody can talk about all day. And not just glee kids or football players or whatever, but every fucking body. Two kids in high school who are legit engaged - with a ring and everything - is big news no matter who they are. Puck doesn't think there's been this much gossip about one couple in this place since everybody found out that Quinn was knocked up sophomore year. He wonders what his reaction to this would have been like if he hadn't already known that it was going to happen. (Probably not so great, but he doesn't like thinking about that.)
Of course, everyone is speculating that it's because Rachel's pregnant, too, that Finn managed to actually knock up his girlfriend this time instead of letting someone else do it. Puck doesn't really appreciate getting dragged into this shit by a bunch of people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about, so by the time he gets to lunch, he's in a foul mood.
He waits until everyone at the table has finished fawning over Rachel's ring and asking questions (questions to which Rachel gives a lot of non-answers and Finn doesn't say a word), then asks the question that everyone's been whispering about all day, the question that he knows everyone at the table, even though they're all friends, are thinking:
"So, are you knocked up?"
He mostly asks because he's an asshole, a fact that's just driven home by the look of hurt on Rachel's face.
"Dude-" Finn starts, only to be cut off by Rachel's quiet, "Of course I'm not."
Quinn shifts uncomfortably in her seat, catching Puck's eye and making him feel like even more of an ass. He doesn't know what he thought was going to happen when he opened his mouth, but the tense silence around this table - in this group of people who never fucking shut up - wasn't it.
He shrugs carelessly, reaching across the table to snag a french fry off of Tina's tray. "Just checking,"
Brittany says something about posies, to which Sugar responds with some bullshit about the plague, and everyone goes back to ignoring Puck.
He doesn't miss the way that Rachel glances at him when the bell rings to dismiss them back to class. He's not sure whether that thing he sees in her eyes is hurt or disappointment.
He almost doesn't answer when he sees Rachel's name come up on his phone. It's just that he knows that she'll keep trying to talk to him until he gives in - she's done it before - and he doesn't have the energy required to try to avoid her.
"What's up?" he answers, pretending like she didn't just announce her engagement to his best friend after telling him that she wasn't sure what she wanted to do about the proposal.
"Do you care to explain why you tried to start rumors about me at lunch today?"
He rolls his eyes. "Everybody was already saying it," he tells her. "I stopped the fucking rumor. Nobody else was going to have the balls to ask." That shit's true, too; at least some of the people that he heard talking about it later that afternoon didn't seem to think that she was pregnant. And fuck her for accusing him of starting rumors; Kurt and Mercedes start shit like that, not him.
"But you knew it wasn't true," she says. He doesn't respond. "Aren't you happy for me at all, Noah?"
Huh. Is he happy for her? She just spent three days agonizing about whether or not she should say yes to this, and now that she has, she wants to know if he's happy for her.
"Why did you say yes, Rachel?" he asks instead of answering her question.
He hears her draw in a shaky breath. "It would have broken his heart if I said no. I don't know if we would we have made it through that."
Puck feels his heart break a little bit, for her.
"Sure, Rach. I'm happy for you," he says in a tone that lets her know that he's anything but. "Congratulations."