Tell Her This
Tell her not to go
I ain't holding on no more
Tell her something in my mind
Freezes up from time to time
They have known each other for years, in a relationship that has been antagonistic the majority of the time. And not the sort of antagonistic where dunking her pigtails into the grimy plastic cup they're using to clean their watercolor paintbrushes secretly means he likes her, no, this is full on smoldering tempers and sneering asides, colorful icy drinks ruining her outfits and pointed jabs insulting his intelligence.
For most of their lives, they just couldn't stand each other.
Tell her not to cry
I just got scared that's all
Tell her I'll be by her side
All she has to do is call
He doesn't know when exactly it changed for him; his defenses to her were already down by the time his mother planted the idea of dating "a nice Jewish girl" in his head. It was because of Glee Club, he knows that. He guesses daily exposure to her neuroses and ambitions and general weirdness just slowly wore him down, leading him to travel a road from contempt, to tolerance, to amusement and then interest.
Tell her the chips are down
I drank too much and shouted it aloud
Tell her something in my heart
Needs her more than even clowns need the laughter of the crowd
He likes how Rachel calls him Noah when she's feeling gentle and kind or even just wants a favor; thinks it's funny when she calls him Puck, because that's supposed to mean she's mad, but she has all the rage power of a fluffy kitten.
He likes that her tell when she's nervous is that she repeatedly tucks the same lock of silky dark hair behind her ear and then tangles her fingers together until he thinks that she's never gonna get them unknotted this time, no way.
He likes that nothing keeps her down for long, even though it's obvious that words hurt Rachel Berry just as much as sticks and stones. She picks herself up and keeps going. It's not any kind of New Agey every cloud has a silver lining crap, either; she just goes on because she doesn't know how not to. She doesn't see the point in staying down when you've fallen down. There's too much to do to lay around feeling sorry for yourself.
God help him, he even finds her stammering – like when she was trying to process why he was offering her a Slushie to drink instead of wear – completely adorable.
When she took his large, rough hand in her small soft one and guided him into the restroom, when she tilted his head back and washed Slushie out of his hair, that's the moment he can pinpoint as when he knew his heart was hers forever.
Tell her what was wrong
I sometimes think too much
But say nothing at all
And tell her from this high terrain
I am ready now to fall
But he has never told her this, he has never known how to tell her this, and now he has to watch her as she pines after his best friend. Finn always thinks that he's the one losing girlfriends to Puck, but Puck watches them return to Finn over and over and over again. At this stage in life, Puck is an interlude; Finn is the final dance.
He hates it.
He guesses that it's Finn's supposed emotional articulateness that does it, because Finn can say "I love you" with the same ease that he throws a football, and high school girls don't get that they're only words, that there are other things that matter more.
Finn doesn't know that Rachel still likes grape slushies even though she's spent most of high school washing them out of her hair, he has even less idea than Puck that there's a difference between Barbra and Bernadette, and he definitely doesn't grasp just how fast Rachel is going to leave Ohio in the dust as soon as she gets that diploma in her hand.
Tell her not to go
I ain't holding on no more
Tell her nothing if not this
All I want to do is kiss her
But Puck knows these things and a thousand more important ones that he's learned from the cougars he cleans pools for, and he knows that Finn and Rachel's high school romance is not a deathless love, and that one day the nuances that Puck notices will be a bigger deal than the flowers that Finn gives her today.
He knows that between himself and Finn, he's the one who's more likely to be able to hack it in New York with Rachel, to push where Finn would haplessly coax, to sacrifice his dignity in a stupid stunt to make her laugh where Finn would try (and fail) to tell a silly joke.
Puck knows that Finn is not a big picture kind of guy, and that this is what is going to be the downfall of the Hudson-Berry partnership. Not immediately, but inevitably.
Tell her something in my mind
Freezes up from time to time
Puck knows all of these things.
He just doesn't know how to tell Rachel.
But he's pretty sure he has enough time to work it all out in the end.
Author's Note: The song in this story is "Tell Her This," by Del Amitri.