"Noah?" Puck lifted his head up from where it was resting on his knees. He saw a pair of black ballet flats and followed them up, past the grey knit tights to his favorite fucking black skirt in the whole world. He kept going to the purple and grey striped sweater and then up to the scowling face of Rachel Berry. "I'm quite positive you're not supposed to be napping back here." She said crossing her arms over her chest and tapping her foot on the floor.
He was sitting on the floor in the back corner of Sheet's-N-Thing's. Mrs. Shuester said that the bath towel section needed to be completely re-folded and re-arranged and he'd volunteered for the job because the security camera's didn't catch this corner of the store and if he was lucky she'd forget she even sent him back here and he could catch up on some much needed sleep. "Wasn't sleeping," he said rubbing the sleep out of his eyes even as he said this. "I'm folding."
He motioned to the pile of towels that surrounded him that were totally not folded. "Obviously," Rachel snorted.
"What are you doing here?" he asked holding his hand out to her. She grabbed it and pulled him to his feet.
"I ran into your mother at Temple." Rachel said as he started to pick up the towels. "Rabbi Wasserman wanted to discuss her heading the JCC fundraiser and you know how your mother is about the fundraiser." Puck snorted because he did know.
Being asked to head the fund raiser was a big fucking deal between all the old ladies. And every year they had to try and one-up whoever did it the year before cause Jew's were nothing if not competitive, especially when it came to raising money for God.
His mom had been asked two times already and if the Rabbi asked her to do it this year then she'd be the only woman at Temple who'd done it three times and he knew his mom would give him up for a chance to rub that in Stella Cohen's face.
"Well, she was telling the Rabbi how she'd love to but she had to come bring you dinner and I could just see Mrs. Cohen's smile getting bigger and bigger by the second so I offered to bring it for her." Rachel smiled and held up a large brown paper bag.
"Awesome. I'm starving," Puck smiled at her. He knew how much Rachel hated Stella Cohen. She made her personal feelings on Rachel's father's and how she feels they should not be welcome in a place of worship, very well known, loudly, to anyone who would listen so anything that annoyed her made Rachel happy.
Puck would never admit to this out loud, but he'd been known to go out of his way to piss her off, just because it generally made Rachel smile, plus she was an uptight, stuck up bitch so it was fun for him.
"Would you mind bringing it to the back for me?" he asked her motioning to the fact that his arms were full of towels. "I've got that book you loaned me for English class if you want it back."
"Sure," Rachel shrugged and followed him as he led her through the doors to the stock room where he dumped the towels into a large bin and then onto the employee lounge.
Rachel walked over to the table, set the bag down and stared to unload the food as Puck walked to his locker and pulled out his book sack. He dropped into the chair next to her and sighed as he dug through the bag. "You look tired," Rachel commented as she opened the Tupperware and inhaled the scent of homemade matzo ball soup. "I thought vacations were supposed to be rejuvenating."
"Fuckin' exhausted," Puck corrected her stifling a yawn. "I've been working double shifts all break. I'm still trying to pay back Carmel High for that shit that went down with Vocal Adrenaline last year."
"Right," Rachel paused. "Noah, I never really got the chance to properly thank you for your part in defending my honor. While I'm not sure that property damage was the way to go, I suppose it was better than bodily harm, which Finn told me was your initial idea." And yeah so he might have come up with this plan wherein he beat the shit out of Jesse St. Asshat but Finn said that could get out of hand very quickly, which was probably true. "I do appreciate it," she said laying a hand on his arm.
"Whatever, dude was a douche." Puck grumbled.
"Yes, while I abhor that word, Jesse certainly was the very definition of a douche," Rachel nodded.
Puck smiled 'cause Berry saying douche was cute. "Here," he handed her a well worn book. "Thanks, this Shakespeare shit is fucking killing me."
"Anytime," Rachel smiled. "Did you understand it?"
Puck paused, normally he would shrug it off but he'd promised his mom that he'd try harder this year after last year with baby gate and the tire slashing incident. He'd already let her down with the whole ATM thing so he really needed to buckle down. "Not really," he admitted. "Like I can't figure out if the guy's crazy or just acting like he's crazy and the whole ghost thing is just weird and what's up between Hamlet and his mom?"
"It's one of the more difficult Shakespeare plays because there are so many ways to interpret things," Rachel said. "I could go over it with you if you want?"
"Really?" Puck looked up at her. "That would be really awesome actually."
"Great!" Rachel smiled brightly at him.
"Could we like do it now?" Puck asked her. "I don't have a lot of free time lately and mom packed enough food for like fifteen people. Have you eaten yet?"
"No I haven't and your mom's Matzo ball soup is quite good."
"It's the shit," Puck smiled. "Let me just go get some drinks and find you a spoon." He stood up and walked out of the room leaving Rachel to explore. She found the work schedule posted up on the bulletin board and noticed that Puck's name was in practically every time slot that he wasn't at school. He hadn't been taking double shifts, he'd been taking triple shifts, no wonder he was napping when she found him.
"Here we go," Puck said walking back in the room carrying two cans of soda and a box. They went to the table and when he tore open the box she realized it was a set of silverware that they sold them on Isle 5. He saw her look and shrugged it off. "Whatever, they won't miss it," he said pulling a spoon out of the box and passing it to her. She took the spoon and was about to give him another withering glare when she saw her drink and smiled instead.
"Root beer?" Rachel asked.
"It's still your favorite right?" Puck asked digging into the soup.
"Yeah," Rachel nodded and opened the can. "I can't believe you remembered." He shrugged it off and went back to eating.
When they were like nine or ten they were both at JCC summer day camp together and Puck was always trying to get her to trade her lunch stuff with his. He'd come over one day annoyed because his mom had packed orange juice for him but he said you couldn't drink orange juice with peanut butter and jelly and asked what she had to drink. She'd told him her dad's had packed her beer and he'd looked at her funny and said he really doubted that. She'd insisted, saying she drank beer all the time and that it was her absolute most favorite drink in the world. When she'd pulled a Root Beer out of her lunch bag, and Puck had finished laughing and explaining to her the difference, they ended up sharing it and trading his orange juice to Tara Weinstein for a bag of cookies.
"So I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're responsible for that," she nodded over her shoulder at the bulletin board and Puck looked up and smiled as she dug a matzo ball from the soup.
"Kick ass right?" Puck asked looking at the sign he'd put up a few weeks ago.
There was a picture of a dinosaur, circled in red with a line slashed through it and it read, "This is Velociraptor-free workplace. It has proudly been 12 days since the last Velociraptor incident." The '12' being hastily scribbled on a post it note in the middle of the paper.
"I didn't realize that Lima, Ohio was such a hot-bed of Velociraptor activity." Rachel smiled and sipped her drink.
"It's a jungle out there," Puck shrugged. "You never know what might be hiding in the stacks with the toilet brushes."
"I had no idea your job was harrowing," Rachel chuckled at him. Puck smirked and got up, walking to his locker then came back to the table and set a small Velociraptor in front of her. It stood about one foot tall, arm raised for attack, teeth barred. "What is this?" Rachel reached out to touch it, it felt rubbery.
"I found it online," Puck smirked. "It's remote controlled. I hide it in random places all over the store and then scare the crap out of Finn. That shit is fucking hilarious."
Rachel shook her head at him. "So Hamlet."
"Right," Puck grabbed the book. They spent the rest of his lunch break talking about Hamlet and fighting over the last Matzo ball, which he gave to Rachel and she cut in half to share with him. He was rinsing out the Tupperware and Rachel's spoon, wondering if he could get away with just washing it and putting it back in the box when he heard Rachel cry out in pain.
He turned around to see her glaring at the Raptor and holding her finger. "What happened?"
"I was trying to clean up." Rachel said annoyed. "I was just going to put it away when my finger got caught on one of the teeth. They're surprisingly sharp. Look, I'm bleeding," she held out her hand and Puck saw a big red blood droplet sliding slowly down her index finger.
"Let me see." He walked over and grabbed her hand. "He bit you good."
"He didn't bite me, don't be so melodramatic," Rachel rolled her eyes.
"Just let me clean it off…" he looked around but he didn't see any napkins or paper towels or tissues and he didn't really want blood on his smock because Terri would have his nut sack for something like that. So he just slipped her finger in his mouth, sucked off blood without even thinking about it. He didn't think it was a big deal, he did it all the time when he cut himself. But then he heard her breath hitch in her throat and he looked up to see her staring at his lips that were wrapped around her finger and he smirked. He couldn't help it, he let his tongue swirl around the tip of her finger and legit he saw her eyes actually darken.
He pulled her finger free with an audible pop and then turned around to find the first aid kit that was under the sink. Plus he really needed to not look at her right now, cause if he kept looking at her when she was looking at him like that he might do something stupid, like shoving her up against the lockers and having his way with her. He found the first-aid kit and wrapped a band-aid around her finger. "Thank," she said smiling up at him. "And thanks for dinner. I had a lovely time."
"Sure," Puck shrugged. "Though I'm still not sure I get the whole 'Play within a play thing'. Maybe you could bring me dinner tomorrow and we could go over it again?" He was pretty sure he was gonna have to beat his own ass later for being such a pussy but he couldn't not ask, especially now that he was pretty sure Rachel and Finn were totally over after he left her ass at the Christmas Tree lot. Yeah she'd called him crying after that shit and he'd left in the middle of his shift to go pick her up and had to take two extra ones to make up for it.
"I would like that very much," Rachel said. "So long as it's just the two of us," Puck held his breath for a second wondering if she was saying what he thought she was saying. "Maybe leave the Raptor in the locker."
"Right, sure." Puck ducked his head.
"And then maybe if you ever get a night off, you could take me out to a real dinner." Rachel smiled. "I mean I'm sure that's the least you owe me after the Raptor attack," she held up her finger and pointed to the band-aid.
"I think I can swing that," Puck said. "Oh and speaking of." He walked to the bulletin board and tore the post-it note with 12 off and put a new post-it up with a 0 written on it. "We were on streak too."
"Sorry I broke it," Rachel frowned.
"It was bound to happen eventually," Puck shrugged and tossed a hand over her shoulder to walk her out to the store. "Raptor incidents are on the rise you know."
This was written for a prompt on the puckrachel drabble meme for a picture of a Velociraptor free workplace sign. I posted it on my journal a few weeks ago and wasn't going to put it up here, but since I think there is going to be a sequel now, I figured why not. Enjoy.