He goes on google maps the day she announces she's gotten into Yale and discovers that Lima is exactly six hundred sixty six miles away from New Haven if you take Route 80, straight through. He absently realizes he's never been that far from home before, and thinks about texting her this information with a winky face (the mileage, not the other thing), and then decides against it, chucking his phone into a pile of clothes on the floor so he'd forget about the thing entirely.
Even so, he can't shake the thought that only they would inspire such a wicked number.
It's the first time anyone other than his mother or his sister has said the words "I love you" to him, and meant them. They're different, coming from her, and it kind of throws him for a loop - he hadn't exactly been expecting this when she'd crashed his study session with coach Beiste and offered a change of scenery. Something stirs in his stomach, and he knows he doesn't deserve to hear any of this, but god, it feels damn good. He remembers the words leaving his own lips, remembers feeling the pang in his chest - what if she didn't say it back, or look at him, or do anything? (She hadn't, really. She'd smiled up at him like he'd just told her that all her problems were going to disappear forever, and he'd really wanted believe that he could do that for her, but even in that second, he'd known it wouldn't last longer than the time it took the ink to dry on Beth's adoption papers. It'd been nice to imagine, though.) He's pretty sure she's feeling that right now, but she's Quinn, so she plows ahead - she talks to him like he's her equal, even though they both know he's not, and she makes him feel better. She makes him feel loved.
He thinks maybe things are different, this time, because there's no ink to dry - there's no firecracker, waiting carefully for the right second to explode and blow them all to tiny pieces, effectively ruining this moment and all the ones after it. This time, there are just stretches of time unaccounted for, and her lips on his. He's definitely kind of a lucky guy.
Their moms make them go out to dinner together after graduation, the five of them - him, her, their moms (who seem to have a hell of a lot to talk about for two women who don't know each other, and are only connected by a strange history that isn't even theirs) and his little sister, who keeps talking about lobsters (much to his mother's dismay). Even though it's not the most normal of meals, and they have to suffer through a few heavy, drawn out pauses filled with things that nobody wants to say out loud, it's not too bad. Quinn brushes her fingers against his somewhere after the salads are served, and he laces them together, giving her hand a tiny squeeze. He notices the small smile on her lips as she bites into a tomato, and he spears a piece of lettuce, happy when it hasn't disappeared even after the waitress takes away the remnants of dessert.
He drives her home ("straight home, Noah," his mother warns, giving him a stern look followed by a soft smile. He takes that as enough of a sign that he can disobey her,) and stops at the park on the way. They get out of his truck and sit on the picnic table, her legs over his lap, and he kisses her, full on the lips. He cradles her head with his hand, and tangles his fingers in her hair. He doesn't think he's ever felt anything so damn soft.
"You taste like root beer," she mutters against his lips, scrunching up her face and pressing a chaste kiss to his mouth. She leans her head against his shoulder as he tells her she's the only person he knows who doesn't like the taste of root beer. "I must be extraordinary, then," she teases, scratching lightly at the back of her neck.
He doesn't bother telling her she's more than that, because there's no way she doesn't already know.
He gets a job at Burt's, because pool cleaning is less fun when you don't want to scam on every MILF out there (just one), and the money is pretty much the same. She comes in wearing a pair of red high heels one day, her hair up in an impossibly high pony tail, wearing a tight pair of white shorts, a flowing red top, and a grin. Her lips are red, too, and he's decided he really likes this theme when she walks up to him and hops up on the hood of the car he's working on.
They'd fought the night before, screaming at each other at the top of their lungs about nothing - "You didn't have to break the mirror, Puck! You didn't have to break anything!" While he'd balled his hands into fists and squeezed, trying to release his rage without breaking another mirror, "What the fuck is his picture doing in your bedroom, Quinn?" She'd torn it in half, then again, and once more before rolling her eyes and tossing the bits up into the air, one of his dreadlocks falling onto the toe of his sock. "First of all, if you didn't notice," her voice had been thick with anger, "there's more than just him in the picture. Second, I don't think I want you here tonight," they'd been quiet for a few minutes, and then a few more, "you should go home." He hadn't protested, just walked out and slipped his shoes on in the hallway, angry because he wasn't good enough and never would be.
This morning, he'd woken up with his head a little clearer, he'd had one text message: "Favorite color, Puckerman." He'd responded without much of a fight, "red" and then had gotten dressed for work, somehow knowing the fight was over.
"Something about guys with mohawks who are covered in grease," she muses, when he shoots her a confused looking grin, standing between her legs, "ones who are going to stain all my clothes, but for some reason or another," she licks her lips, and he swears to fucking god, she's going to kill him, "I could care less." She pulls him in, locking her legs around his back and tugging at his mohawk - which she was trying desperately to get him to shave off (she was almost there, though she didn't know yet,) - kissing him deeply. Burt throws a dirty rag at his head from the front desk and tells him to stop being such a slacker, though he's got a smile on his face. He watches as her cheeks flush in that perfectly sexy way they tend to do, and then she untangles herself from him with a smirk on her lips, cocking a brow at him as she looks back over her shoulder while she walks out.
He decides he's got a migraine and bails on Burt's, sprinting after her car and practically diving into it, forcing her to do at least twenty three over the speed limit on the way to her (empty) house.
He sneakily (not-so-sneakily, considering Burt had to approve, and had - though not without a knowing smile,) takes all his days off in a row during mid-July, and they take an almost four hour drive to Saugatuck, renting a shitty little motel room right on the beach. She insists he let her pay for something, so she gets to buy him ice cream every night, and that's it - if he's going to be stuck here for the next year (at least) he's going to make all this money back anyway, and he can't think of a better person to blow it on.
They wade into Lake Michigan, hand in hand, and he can't stop staring at her, a smile on her lips, her hair pulled back into a wet ponytail, the red (yes, red, because he'd specified he really liked the color, especially on her,) bikini sticking to her skin in the sexiest of ways. He pulls her into his chest, pressing a slow kiss to her lips even though there are a bunch of little kids like, forty feet away from them, playing chicken. She takes advantage of his slight distraction when one of them kicks him squarely in the back, and jumps onto him, wrapping her legs as high up on his chest as she can get them.
He kisses her softly when she pouts, "You're like a tree," she whines, "I wanted to knock you out." He wants to tell her that she, without a doubt, already has. Instead, he laughs, shaking his head and falls backwards dramatically, bringing them both crashing into the cool water.
She manages to sneak in paying for dinner one night, and it kind of annoys him. "I'm supposed to be the one paying," he grumbles, "I told you, you can buy me ice cream. Maybe a sprinkle if I want it, maybe tw-," she cuts him off, holding up her hand and giving him an icy glare, "what, it's what we decided on."
"It's what you decided on," she growls, holding the bill fold to her chest so he won't grab it from her and throw her credit card back at her like he'd planned to, "I'm not going to let you dote on me like I'm some kind of good-for-nothing housewife, Puck." She's annoyed, he can tell, and it's turning him on - her cheeks are pink, and her eyes are narrow, her lips in a thin line that just screams fuck me til I give.
"I never said you were a good-for-nothing anything. I just wanted to take you on vacation," he crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back in his chair, "you should deal with it."
"I can take care of myself," she's stubborn and independent, two things that don't ever mix well when they're both threatened at the same time, "I don't want to deal with it." Either she's more pissed off than he thought, or she's just at turned on as he is - either way, she stands up, stalking to the back of the restaurant and disappears down the little hallway he knows the restrooms are located in. He waits a decent amount of time (six and a quarter Mississippi seconds) before following her; her arm reaches out the door of the ladies room and tugs him in by the back of his t-shirt. She slams him against the door and locks it before running her hands up his chest, reaching the back of his neck and kissing him deeply, pressing herself into him until he gets the picture, and turns them around so he's pushing her against the solid wood of the door.
"We have to be quiet," she breathes, as his fingers slip up and under her dress. He nods, "and you have to let me pay for dinner," she grabs his wrist with what seems like the force of a sumo wrestler, and seizes it away from her inner thigh, "or else none of this. None of it at all," she looks up at him with hooded eyes, testing him as he tries to free his wrist.
"One dinner," he locks eyes with her, "one dinner, and all the sprinkles you want, but that's my only offer." He tears her panties off before she says it's okay, his jeans falling down around his ankles as he hikes her dress up around her hips, pushing into her with a growl.
She's paid for dinner twice by the time they leave, she's got the bruising on her hips to prove it.
"Come on," she chirps in his ear one morning, pulling him out of a deep sleep, "get your lazy ass out of bed, Puckerman." She throws the curtains open, and the sun hits her body, encompassing her, and he feels like he might pass out because she looks like a literal angel, wrapped in a white sheet.
"Where're we going," he whines, sitting up and rubbing his hand over his face, "It's Saturday - we weren't gonna get out of bed today, I thought we had a pl-,"
"Things change," she snaps, shooting him a look and rummaging around through her drawers, then tossing something at him, "now get dressed."
She drags him to the public pool in a bathing suit she swears is his (how she had his swim trunks lying around, ones he hadn't seen since the very beginning of sophomore year, he'd never know) but fits in an awkward, tight way, and lays her head on his chest as they squish into one, slightly reclined lounge chair. "I'm gonna have a head shaped tan line," he mumbles into her hair, and the laughter he gets from her is enough penance for said tan line.
He tugs her into the pool after a while, his skin hot and sticky, smelling of her suntan lotion. She wraps herself around him in the water, her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, trying to keep herself as dry as possible, but he launches her off of him, laughing as she flies through the air with a screech. As she hits the water and then pops back up, he can tell that he's going to get severely punished for that - doesn't matter, seeing her wade over to him in her yellow bikini ("it doesn't have polka dots," she'd grumbled when he'd sang her the generic little song,) is worth it. She manages to get him under the water a few times, and though he claims he let her do it, she's a lot stronger than she looks - she's also sneakier than he could possibly imagine. He pops up from the deep end, his feet touching the bottom, laughing as she places her feet on his bent knees. She wraps her arms around his neck, and they dip under the water, their lips still connected.
Later, the sun sinking behind them, he sits her on the edge of the wall, standing between her legs and kissing her, long and slow as the lifeguard blows his whistle and narrows his gaze at them.
Her mother decides at the last minute, as one last act of parenting, that her daughter will not be living in a dorm room - not if it's the last thing she does. For once, he actually likes one of Judy Fabray's decisions, though Quinn's not too thrilled with it. "I want a real college experience," she rolls her eyes, shaking her head as she clicks around on a real estate website, and he presses his forehead to her shoulder. He doesn't like to think about her leaving because it means thinking about him staying here, him being without her, him failing - yet again. He watches as she surveys little apartments near Yale with a critical eye, trying to make sure that her Mother would be angry with the rent - "If she's going to force me to live off-campus, she's going to pay an arm and a leg for it," - and he tries to commit how she smells to memory, even if it's kind of the lamest thing he's ever done.
"Do you like this one," she yawns, slightly interested, after a few long hours and a few hundred (at least it felt like that,) places, "I think I like this one." She clicks through pictures, becoming more and more awake with each passing second. He nods into her skin, but doesn't say anything, because he's too busy pinpointing the feeling of her slipping away.
Her keys arrive in the mail, as well as a packet about her freshman orientation, and he thinks he might cry. Her room starts getting packed up, and every time he walks in, he swears he loses like four years off of his life. "You don't look happy anymore," she tells him quietly, pressing a kiss below his earlobe as he pushes the blanket further away from their bodies, the late night air thick with moisture, "how do I make you happy?"
He can't exactly tell her to stay.
"Can I come visit you?" It's cold, for some reason - summers in Lima are usually all hot and sticky, strange weather patterns and plummeting temperatures followed the next day by skyrocketing ones. The climate wasn't that unbearable once you're used to it, but it shouldn't be this cold, especially in August. Distantly, somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks he has a fever, or something wrong with him to make him shiver like this, but he pushes it away, running his thumb along the underside of her wrist.
She searches his face for something, and he wishes he knew what, so he could give it to her. Since he's not a mind reader, he looks at her hopefully, shaking something fierce. She presses the back of the wrist he's been holding to his forehead, then kisses him softly, "I'd be mad if you didn't," she says, quietly, "it's a long drive, though."
He watches as worry clouds her face, and he kisses it away, telling her he can use the time to brush up on his seventies rock.
He packs her car for her, making sure each thing fits the exact right way so her view isn't obstructed. Her mother had hired a UHaul for the bigger items, but there were about fifty (thousand) things that Quinn refused to put into a rental truck, things she insisted on taking on her own. She's already crying when he shuts the trunk with both hands, and he doesn't know what to do, so he wraps his arms around her and shakes his head, "We've never said goodbye before," he says into her hair, his voice raw, "and we're not doing it now." She nods into his chest, but when she's kissing him later, it's all he can gauge from her - goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
The first time he makes the trip, he gets lost. He's given her a week to herself - a week and a half, technically, and he thinks he's racked up more texts than he has in the entire time he's had a cell phone - but enough is enough, he needs to see her. He winds up somewhere near Philly, and by the time he gets to New Haven, he's been through New York again, and he's cursing like a sailor. She's standing outside waiting for him when he reaches her apartment, and it's all he can do to put his truck in park before she's jumped him.
Her shirt comes off in the elevator, as he presses her against the wall and kisses her teasingly, making her whine into his mouth. He lets her unlock her apartment door, and before she can even shut it, he's got her shorts off. He's undressed within the next minute, and the minute after that they're on the couch, and she's on top - he wouldn't be surprised if the door was still open, to be honest. He rocks his hips up into hers, their lips attached to each other, or at least some bit of skin, or tongue the whole time - it's not long, he's spilling into her and she's crying out within a few fast, hard minutes - but they've got nearly seventy two hours, so there'll be time for things to go slow later.
They don't leave her apartment for the first thirty six hours, nor do they put on clothes. They eat cookie dough out of a tube with tea spoons that are way too fancy for a college freshman to own (thanks, Mommy Fabray,) and have sex on every imaginable surface (as well as some not-so-imaginable ones) until they're completely exhausted. They're in the shower, and he's holding her up because she looks like she might fall when she says it, quietly, into his chest, "Goodbye is going to hurt so much worse this time."
He wishes she wouldn't dwell on it so he doesn't do it, too. He can see it in her eyes, though, and so it creeps into his brain, cracks open a beer, and kicks back for a long stay.
They get drunk the night before he has to go, and he doesn't know what provokes him to yell, but it's not like it takes much. "We don't say goodbye," he spits at her, the look on her face making his heart cave into itself. He's never been the greatest drunk, especially when he was drinking something harder than beer - he supposes it's for the best that he didn't inherit the "good drunk" gene, though. "We don't say goodbye, and you've already said it seven times today."
"I'm sorry," her voice is quiet - she knows she can't say anything back, he realizes. He knows she doesn't want to provoke him anymore, so he doesn't say something that breaks everything and makes it irreparable, something that ruins them, "I won't say it again, okay?"
"You should say it," his voice is thick, laced with anger, and fear, and hurt seeping in from places he didn't know existed, "practice for later, right?" She looks like she might cry, and the whiskey floating around his body throws itself a party. When he kisses her, it's sad and rough, his hands on her face, in her hair, on her hips. Their clothes are already off, because there was no use for them in the apartment anyway, and they're on the bed quickly. He's positioned himself between her legs, but he doesn't move, just looks down at her and watches her face crumple. He brushes the hair from her eyes and crawls to her side, pulling her into his chest, "I'm so sorry," his mouth knows what to say, so he turns off his brain, "I'm so, so sorry, baby."
"It's not fair," she looks up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and hollow, "it's not fair that we still have to be apart. I mean," she presses her face to his bicep, "it's only been eleven days, Puck. I only left eleven days ago. What about the next seventy something? How are we going to do this?"
He shakes his head because he has no idea.
He leaves four hours later than he was supposed to, because he didn't want to go, and she didn't want him to go, and he'd almost fucking cried twice because she kept saying things like, "I don't know how to do this," and it scares the shit out of him, even now. He drives the whole night, just making it to work on time at Burt's. He fucks up on a carburetor, and Burt sends him home.
Quinn doesn't call - she calls every night, and they talk for long expanses of time about nothing, and fall asleep with the phones pressed to their ears - just sends him a text "sleep tight. love you. xo Q."
He's never felt like he might die more than right now.
He visits again, three weekends later, and he knows it's different already. She still calls, and they still talk, but sometimes he hears her doing other things, and sometimes she knows he's watching TV instead of listening to her talk about her Political Science class. They still say "I love you," and it still makes him happy, but he's afraid she's not, and that's what's making things grow worse and worse. So, when he finally arrives, there's the desperate "I missed you so much" sex, where her clothes are gone by the time the door closes, but after, she immediately gets dressed. He looks at her with his brows raised, putting on his boxers. "I have to write a paper," her voice is stressed, "I know," she's thinking about something, making a list in her head like she always does, he can tell by the squint of her eyes, "I know this is our weekend, but my professor just assigned it, and I want to get it done so I can have tomorrow and Sunday with you," she looks down at him, sincerity washing over her features.
She kisses him and says she'll be back in a few hours - four, tops. He flips on the tv and thinks maybe things could get better, if they worked at them.
Things do not get better.
A call every night turns into every other night. Every other night turns into twice a week. Twice a week turns into once every other week. Once every other week turns into, "I'm visiting my Aunt in Rhode Island for Thanksgiving, so I'm not going to be home." Excuses turn into no excuses at all, and things go from worse to non-existent, and his heart is hollow.
Sometimes he tries to call her. She sends it to voicemail, and never calls back.
He shows up at her house the day after Christmas, and she answers the door in her pajamas. He kisses her, right there on her front doorstep, and asks her what he did wrong. "I can't talk to you right now," she's looking at her toes - they're painted red. His chest aches. "I'll come over later, okay?" She pecks his cheek, and shuts the door. He walks home, because he walked there - only on the way home, he's numb to the cold.
He waits on his front porch, a space heater running with an extension cord through the house and out to his perch. She comes, just like she said, about four hours later, and sits next to him. "I should apologize," she says, quietly, looking at her hands. He doesn't say anything. "It just got so hard so quick, Puck," she squeezes her eyes shut, "I knew when I pulled out of my driveway that it was going to be hard, but...the first time you came to see me," she presses her hand to her cheek, shaking her head, "I couldn't look at you without wanting to cry, because I knew I was going to have to wait that many more days before I saw you again...and I'd see you, and all I could think about was how many hours until you were gone, and I had to pick up the pieces again." He stands, because sitting seems stupid. "You have to believe me, I want this to work."
He doesn't. If she wanted this to work, she'd make it work - she'd fight for it with him. Instead, he's got a busted heart and a million rounds of enemy fire pelting him on a minute-by-minute basis. She leaves when he's silent, pressing a kiss to his chin before she goes, "I'll try harder," she says quietly, and they both know it's a lie.
She doesn't come home for spring break. He works double shifts the whole week and stays home whenever he's not at the shop. He doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, he doesn't do anything - he lays in his bed and tries to remember a time when everything didn't make him want to shoot up Yale and take no prisoners.
She shows up at his house on the exact date he'd never marked on a calendar, but couldn't forget if he tried. She doesn't say anything, just pushes through the door and presses her face into his chest, taking deep, heaving breaths. He doesn't know how it can feel so good to have someone in his arms, and yet want them out so badly. He doesn't push her away, just presses his face into her hair and whispers, "You know I'm always going to be here," even though she hadn't expressed anything that would make him respond like that, "especially for today."
Somehow, they wind up drinking coronas on his back porch, and corona somehow turns into tequila shots - one for each year of their little girl's life, one for good luck, and she crawls into his lap. "I ruined us," she muses, "I'm stupid like that." He wants to tell her she didn't, but she did - he wants to tell her she's not, but they both are.
"I ruined us first," he shrugs, "it was just your turn."
The slap doesn't sting. Her tears after do.
They have sex. It's sloppy, and drunk, and depressing, and as she comes around him, letting out a soft, throaty moan, he can see tears in her eyes - more tears, after he figured she'd cried them all out earlier.
He hopes she can't see any in his.
She leaves in the morning and doesn't say goodbye. Four - literally, four - of his t-shirts are missing out of the drawer, and he feels like he might throw up when he imagines her wearing them.
Her mother tells his mother (yeah, they talk now,) that she's taking a summer class back up at Yale. It's the only reason he knows she's there. He takes a four day weekend sometime around the fourth of July, remembering last year and how they were happy then, and drives to New Haven. He makes record time (ten hours, twenty three minutes) and knocks on her door around four in the morning. She opens the door wearing one of his t-shirts, her hair ruffled from sleep, her eyes still mostly closed. He kisses her before she knows who he is.
"I miss you," he says quietly, when she's registered he is there, and is in the kitchen, putting coffee pods into her Keurig.
"I miss you, too," she smiles at him sleepily, still obviously confused. She brings him a mug filled with coffee, a little bit of milk, like sixteen packets of sugar and he drinks it greedily. "Why are you here?" He doesn't have an answer, so he drinks his coffee and waits for one.
"Because," he says, eventually, looking over at her, "I miss you." She must accept this, because she puts her head on his shoulder and presses a kiss to his chin. It almost feels normal.
They fall asleep for a couple of hours, her head on his chest, and when he wakes up, he suspects her alarm has been going off for a while. He could hear it distantly, making it's way into his weird, surface dreams. He kisses her on the forehead, rubbing her back, "Your alarm," he says, kind of hoping she'll ignore it, "it's going off." She sits up, startled, and looks at him for a second, remembering it wasn't exactly a dream (or so he figures, as he'd gotten acclimated to that fact only a couple minutes before, himself,) before getting up and turning it off.
"I have to take a shower," she says, leaning on the far wall, "I have class in a couple hours." She's looking at her toes, and he can't help but stare at her bare legs before looking back up at her face. He moves over to her, pulling his shirt over her head, and kisses her until he thinks his lungs are going to collapse. They fumble into the shower, turning on the water and letting out matching yelps when it's cold - they laugh, and laugh, and things feel okay. He pushes into her, and kisses her, and it doesn't feel wrong - it's freeing, and exhilarating, and good.
"I love you," he says into her ear when it's over, and he's got her pressed against the wall, breathing heavily.
"I'm dating someone," her voice is so quiet that he doesn't think she actually said it - he thinks his own brain made it up just to ruin everything, but then he hears her breath hitch, and he knows it's real. He looks down at her, his brow furrowing, and shakes his head. Blood is rushing in his ears, his eyes are stinging, he thinks he might be having a heart attack. His brain screams at him, but his mouth disobeys.
"Yeah, well," he looks down at their bodies, then back up at her face, "that doesn't change anything. I still love you," he pulls out of her, though, and it does change things - it's already changed everything. She says something about being late for class, and he wants to laugh in her face, but he won't. Instead, he grabs a towel and trudges out of the shower, falling into her bed without wanting to and passing out before she can even get out of the bathroom and tell him to leave.
He sleeps for ten interrupted hours, and when he wakes up, she's sitting next to him in bed, wearing his same t-shirt. He looks up at her, letting out a breath and turning over, so he's on his stomach, pressing his face into her soft sheets. "What's his name," he doesn't ask it so much as say it, keeping his face where it was. He didn't want to look at hers, even though he could feel her eyes on his back. She places her hand over the middle of it, and he wants to flinch away, but he eases into her hand, on instinct. Fucking instincts.
"James," she says, after a long time. "He's nice."
He feels his breathing get more and more erratic, and he knows he should turn over and let himself get some air, but he thinks maybe he's better off like this, letting his lungs shrivel and shrink until they were tiny little raisins in his chest.
"It's better for you this way," she's laying next to him, she's pulled his face into her hands, and her eyes are wild, "it's better. You don't have to bother with missing me, and you can find someone better. Someone who knows better." He wants to tell her it's not fucking better - this will never be better, he will never not miss her, no one will ever fucking know better - but he just stares at her, his breathing rough and his body begging him to just get the fuck up and walk out. "Promise you'll be okay," her thumb is against his lower lip, tracing it, and he's just watching her press the self destruct button (again) without trying to stop her...except, this time, she's taking him down with her. Leave no man behind.
He promises. He doesn't know who he's trying to kid.
On the ride home, he detours because he can and stops in New York. He crashes in Santana's apartment and she lets him drink her beer and watch her get changed into her work outfit - something tight and revealing, she worked at some hole in the wall bar. It doesn't even turn him on anymore. "I fucking hate this," he throws a pillow at her and she scowls, but doesn't say anything, simply returns it to the bed, "she ruined me."
"She ruined you like three and a half fucking years ago," Santana snaps, narrowing her eyes at him, "either you're going to be a pussy little bitch about it for the rest of time, which - being honest - is what I've come to expect from you, or you shut the fuck up, pull your god damn boots out of the mud, and move on." She sits on the edge of her bed, running her fingers through her hair, "I know it's fresh, okay? I know she just...saddled you with this, or whatever, but look at me," she waits until she has his eyes, and he feels his head throb, "you can't do this forever. You can't sit on my bed, drink all my beer, and cry for the rest of your life. You can't wallow, or you're just going to get stuck in it."
She makes sense, but he hates her. He tells her this. She says he better be out of her damn place by the time she gets back, then kisses the top of his head and tells him to call when he gets home so she knows he didn't die.
He starts bartending. Santana was right - the money is really, really fucking good, and it gives him something to do since he can't sleep. He goes to Burt's first thing in the morning, and tries to pretend he doesn't want to throw himself under the lift and let it crush him. Once he finishes there, he goes home, showers, and drives a little ways to the bar in Fort Shawnee. He works until last call, at 3, then goes back home and tries to get a few hours of rest (sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't).
She calls, three times a week usually, trying to pretend they're still friends. He doesn't answer, and doesn't listen to her voicemails.
Sometimes he hits on girls at the bar and feels guilty, and then he remembers she barrelled over his heart with a monster truck. He can't help but still be in love with her, this perfectly imperfect girl that he'll never get over, ever, but can't stand to think about her now, because she could do better, just like he always though - because she was currently doing better.
(He listens to one voicemail, because he misses the sound of her voice, and this woman bought him too many shots, and he's feeling them swim through him, and god, he misses her so damn much. She sounds sad, and he hopes she's okay. All she says, in this wispy, thin voice is, "I wish you would talk to me. I wish you would let me talk to you. I bet you're not even listening to this. Call me back, okay?" He saves that one, because it sounds like - in a sad, irrevocably damaged sort of way - something she could have left on his voicemail before everything went to shit.)
He kind of hates that he's still in Lima when Christmas and New Year's roll around. He wishes he had somewhere to go, or someone to see - that he didn't have to listen to his little sister whine about not getting a fucking Bratz doll, or whatever it was that she wanted this year for Hanukkah. He misses the months in senior year when he was planning his exodus from this place - he's made back all the money he gave to his dad now, six or seven times over if not more, but he can't help but think, in the back of his mind, that if she ever wanted to find him, this is where she would look first.
It makes him feel worthless, first and foremost, and then he passes into a state where he doesn't know how he feels - it's just not good. He stops thinking about his fucking feelings, and ignores the fact that Santana texts him on a near-daily basis saying things like, "can you just get the fuck out of cow town already?" and "an apartment in my building just became free...jump on that shit puckerman."
He doesn't want to get the fuck out of cow town, and he doesn't jump on that shit. He waits. It's pathetic, and he knows it.
He works on New Year's Eve, and it's almost like he's anticipating it. He knows he's going to see her, and he knows it's going to fucking suck. She comes in at around 11:30, when things are pretty packed, but he sees her right away, just like he knew he would. It's not like he could really miss her, considering all things. She's not alone - that part he wasn't exactly anticipating. The guy on her arm looks like he's going to off himself or pull out a bottle of purell and start sanitizing shit, and he kind of wants to break a glass, but he doesn't. He waits for her to see him, not bothering to draw any extra attention to himself because he knows she will. Her face pales, when she does - it probably stings extra when he sees that asshole's lips form the words, "what's the matter, baby?" but he can't exactly feel anything, so he's not sure.
"Hi," she says, quietly, smiling at him from the other side of the bar.
"Hi."
"Hi," says the douchebag in the corner, sidling up to where they were, "I'm James." He offers a hand, and Puck shakes it, watching the other man's face twist at the ferocity of his grip.
"This is Puck," Quinn's voice is too soft for this place, Quinn's everything is too soft for this place. James' face twists in thought, and then he is overcome with realization, then slight anger.
"This is Puck?"
"This is Puck," Puck rolls his eyes, cutting the guy off before he can ask anymore questions, "can I get you guys anything, 'cause I'm...," he gestures to the rest of the bar patrons, who were angrily watching this exchange, "kind of busy." He feels like his throat might rip in half, or something equally as painful, to compensate for the ache radiating throughout his body - a physical counter for all of this metaphorical pain.
"Two dirty martinis," the guy doesn't seem to know how big a douche he actually is, Puck gathers, or that Quinn doesn't like martinis, or that Puck knows Quinn's not 21, "extra olive in mine." Quinn hasn't stopped staring at him. She looks good - not good, tired, - but good. Her hair is growing again, and her eyes are bright. When he looks closer, he realizes they're not the bright he thought they were - they're full of tears. So, she didn't know he worked here.
He doesn't get them their drinks til ten to midnight. James looks pissed, and Quinn's still staring at him. They pay, and James excuses himself for a phone call - who the fuck makes a phone call at ten to midnight on New Year's Eve? He wants to yell in her face - this is the clown you fucked me over for? A guy who can't walk into a normal bar without looking disgusted? A guy who orders fucking martinis and has a thick, upper crust Connecticut lilt to his voice? This is why you threw us away? Are you crazy?
People have stopped ordering drinks - or maybe he's just ignoring them - and she's leaning over the bar, smiling at him in terror. "How are you," she says quietly, so only he can hear, "how are you doing?"
"I've been better," he says, hoping it hurts even though it shouldn't - it's not like he told her the truth - I hate my fucking life, you ruined it, I still love you. He can tell it does, "how's Yale?"
"I miss you," she cuts in, pressing her lips together, looking down at the bar then back up at him, "I really, really do."
Four minutes. People start getting rowdy.
"We can't talk about this now," he feels his body growing cold, "you have someone else."
"I know that, " she keeps cutting him off, he can tell her nerves are shot - what's wrong with her? What's this guy done to her? "I just need you to know that. That I miss you. That I'm stupid." He shakes his head. Someone orders a beer. Two minutes.
"I miss you, too," he says back, uncapping the bottle and handing it to the guy standing in front of him, his eyes on Quinn's, "but you know that."
"No, I don't. You never answer when I call, you," she looks like she might cry, and this is awful and he just wants her to leave, "you don't know how stupid I feel."
"Don't worry about it," she'll worry about it, "I'll be fine, Quinn." He won't. One minute. People start counting down. She looks around for James - he's nowhere to be found. He looks around for James - still nowhere to be found. Thirty seconds.
"I won't," she breathes, shutting her eyes and looking up at him, and he finally has the balls to meet them. Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve. "I wish I could take it all back."
"You can't," eleven, ten, nine, eight, "we can't go back."
Six, "I know," five, four, three, "I'm sorry."
Two.
She kisses him.
One.
He kisses back.
He's sick of her apologies - it doesn't mean he doesn't keep taking them, though. She calls the day after New Year's Day, and he picks up, because he's off from work, and what else does he have to do?
"I broke up with James," is what he hears when the line picks up. He nods. "I don't know what to say."
"Do you like Yale," he genuinely wants to know, "do you like it up there?"
"Sometimes," she sounds like she's crying, "it can be nice."
"It looked nice," he muses. He feels numb - like, this different kind of numb that he hadn't been feeling until she'd walked into the bar the other night, one that he'd never experienced before. He wasn't sure if there was extra anger, or the fact that it's just been going on for so long, or what, but he can't gauge it and it kind of bothers him. "When do you go back?"
"The twenty first," she's definitely crying, "why won't you talk to me anymore?"
"I can't," he shrugs, "I don't know how."
"Tell me what you're still doing here, Puck," she sounds like she's actually sad for him - not just for them, not just because there are all these things between them that neither of them want to talk about, things they don't know how to repair in the slightest, "you could have left a year ago."
"I work here," he doesn't like this question, "I'm fine here."
"You're rotting here," her voice is hollow, "you're letting yourself drown." She's being over dramatic, maybe, or maybe he is, but either way, it's none of her concern, anymore. He thinks about telling her this - telling her she forfeited the right to give a real shit about him when she understood what he'd known all along - things were going to change, and she was going to realize that she could do a thousand times better than him. He doesn't want to tell her that he's here so he doesn't disappoint her and actually make something of himself - so he doesn't stick it to her, and see to it that she knows when he becomes something. He has to stick to her expectations - bore her to death, so to speak - he has to make sure she turns out right about him, that he turns out right about himself. He's doing a pretty good job.
"I think I have to go," he doesn't recognize his voice, "have a good rest of your break."
She calls back six more times in succession, and then resorts to texts that he can't unsee, all laced with the word please, please, please. He shakes his head. No.
His sister starts fascinating over wild frogs, and the fact that they hibernate all winter long. She explains that their hearts don't beat - not once - and they wake up when they it's okay for them to start breathing again.
He thinks this is a concept he could get behind, and lets her tell him all about it while packing his cheeks with cut up pieces of waffle.
He comes out of hibernation because his mother buys him a plane ticket to New York and packs a bag full of his clothes. He goes because she drove him to the airport, and he doesn't want it to be a waste of gas. He bums around on Santana's couch for a week, watching as the air turns warmer, and people start wearing t-shirts outside. He thinks it might be April, but he's not entirely sure. He checks a calendar and realizes it's almost the end of May. His heart nearly shatters into a thousand pieces when he notices the actual date, and he realizes that two days from now, his daughter will be four years old. Santana rolls her eyes when she walks through the kitchen, kicking him in the shin. "Are you going to change your ticket and visit her, or not," she growls, and he doesn't know what she's talking about for a long second. He shrugs, and she takes it as a yes, going on the Delta website and finding him all new flight information. "You've practically become geriatric," she sneers, slapping a stack of printed out pages to his chest, "I'm so fucking sick of it."
"Me too," he doesn't like the way his own voice sounds, anymore, "I just don't know how to go back."
He waits out the day in between, then rents a car and it takes an extra hour than he wants it to, but he gets to New Haven quicker than he ever has. He pulls up at her apartment around eleven thirty, and spots her car in the lot even though it's dark. He walks up to her door, knocking and when she answers, she looks about as surprised as he thinks is possible. She hugs him, pressing her face into his shoulder and breathing him in, right there in the doorway. "I told you," he says, the first words out his mouth in months that actually sound like him, "I'll always be here for today. Tomorrow," he corrects, "you know." She nods, her eyes teary - he doesn't think it's because of the little blonde girl that holds them together, either.
She makes them hot chocolate because even though he won't admit it, it's his favorite thing. He sits on her kitchen counter and looks around - things don't look that much different from when he saw them for the first time, except a little bit more used. She leans against the opposite counter, smiling up at him from her mug. There are a lot of things they could say (need to say, want to say, don't want to say, the list goes on and on,) - so many that they don't say any of them at all. She moves to the other side with him, sitting up on the counter and crossing her legs, indian style. She leans her head into his shoulder - an odd position with her forehead against him, her whole upper body on a slant, but he doesn't mind - and they sit like that for what feels like hours.
He finds it funny that the one person with the power to hurt him the most can possibly be so damn gentle.
They go to the store at midnight in his rental car, and she pushes a cart around the aisles with purpose. He watches her as she goes, knowing practically every move she'd make a few seconds before she'd make it - which box of what she'd pick up, why she didn't pick the one next to it. She's got this determined little scrunch to her brow, and he looks at it almost like it's already a memory, even though it's right there. They buy little, disposable cupcake pans, a box of cake mix, red food dye, a can of pink frosting, a pack of candles, a bottle of red wine (he's still got a fake on him, not that they wind up carding him, anyway,) and a package of oreos ("for the ride home," she gives him a sweet smile before ripping it open, and he feels like maybe he's back in time, somehow). She eats half a sleeve on the way back to her place, stuffing a couple into his mouth as he drives. He doesn't understand what's going on inside his body right now, but he feels like he can laugh, or even crack a smile, and he doesn't know how it's possible, because he hasn't done either of those things in such a long time.
By the time they're back at her place, half of the package is gone - getting the door unlocked had proved to be a challenge of sorts, and there had been a few casualties in the process. He brings the bags in behind her, setting them on the counter and pulls out the wine bottle before anything else - if hibernation had taught him anything, it was that he liked wine, and wine liked him back. He plucks two glasses from the cabinet he knows houses them, and fills them up, handing one to her and tipping back the other. She unpacks the rest of the bag, pointing to where the big, mixing bowl was located so he could go grab it, and he does. She mixes the powder with a bunch of other things, and it eventually becomes batter. He dips his finger in and eats some even though she swats him away, and it tastes pretty good. They make only five cupcakes - four, and one for good luck - and eat the rest of the batter with fancy spoons that are still too fancy for a person attending college to own. They sit on the couch, and he tells her stories about his little sister and her newest fascination - whales, whaling, pretty much anything you could find on Whale Wars, which was most definitely the weirdest show he'd ever seen - and she tells him about her classes.
It's like for a second, life has tricked them into thinking this is normal - sitting on her couch, licking pink cake batter off of spoons, talking to each other with the greatest ease either of them has ever known.
When the microwave timer goes off, they move back into the kitchen. He washes out the bowl in the sink while she takes the cupcakes out. Things feel normal, except that he's acknowledging they feel normal so really they don't, in a tiny way. She takes the bowl from him and dries it with one hand, sitting it in her lap so she can use the other hand to drink her wine. The cupcakes cool, and he feels her eyes on him. He looks back. She looks away. "I feel like we're sixteen," she says, with a laugh. He nods. He does, too. They stick candles into the cupcakes once they're iced, and light them. She rests her head on his shoulder and he can feel her tears hitting his skin. They don't sing, but he hums happy birthday quietly into her ear, and even though it sounds more like a sad song in his raspy voice, somehow it makes things better. They eat all the cupcakes - two each, and then split the last down the middle.
She kisses him with icing on her lips.
They fall asleep in her bed, tangled together in a knot of sheets and legs. They don't have sex, but they kiss a while (he lets her start it, because he doesn't know if he actually can), and when they break for the (almost) last time, she breathes against his lips, "I've wished you were in this bed so many times." He realizes that he has, too.
They wake up around eleven, and she takes him out to breakfast. He doesn't want her to pay, but she gives him one of those silencing looks she has, and he lets her. They go back to her place and wait for Shelby to call - even though things have always been kind of rocky in that area, they're supposed to get one phone call a year, and she figures Shelby won't deny it to them even though he's not so sure. He feels his voice grow thick with tears when he hears Beth chirp on the other end of the phone, "Thank you for the dollhouse! It's the prettiest dollhouse I've ever seen in my whole life, my dollies are going to love it!" He furrows his brow, but she puts a hand on his wrist, silencing him.
"You're welcome, sweetie," she says quietly, her eyes happy, "we made pink cupcakes last night, just for you...we're a little far away, though, and we got kind of hungry, so we ate them. Make sure your mom lets you eat an extra piece of cake for us, okay?" He's never heard her sound like this - like she didn't regret giving Beth up, even a little bit.
"You ate pink cupcakes?" He knows the little voice is addressing him, and not Quinn.
"Sure did, kid," he says, the tears audible. He bites them back, "weren't as good as your birthday cake, I bet," he smiles to Quinn as Beth chatters in their ear about her red velvet birthday cake, and the pink frosting it's got on top. After another few minutes, she says that Mommy needs the phone, and she has to go. They have a strained conversation with Shelby that's over in a matter of seconds, but when they're off the phone, Quinn looks happier than she's ever looked on this day (other than for a split second, on the day Beth was born, with the little pink blanket in her arms and a smile that could kill plastered on her face).
"She sounds like you," she looks over at him, "like you do, when you get excited, and ramble," he shakes his head, furrowing his brow even though there's a smile on his lips. He likes the idea that their daughter reminds her of him.
"You bought her a dollhouse?"
"I put both of our names on it," she says quickly, smiling, "I got a dollhouse for my fourth birthday, and I'm pretty sure it's still in my closet somewhere, so...I figured maybe it could be a tradition without her knowing it was a tradition," she shrugs, smiling shyly.
He doesn't know how to tell her that he's proud of her for being so okay, today - he's proud of her for being so okay, ever, he's proud of her for picking up the pieces and putting them back together, he's proud of her for literally everything, if not more. He stares at her for a long second, and then (even though his insides are screaming, this is why you hurt so bad, don't be stupid, don't be stupid) leans over and kisses her.
She rides with him in the rental car to the airport, her hand laced with his free one, and he feels better than he's felt in a long, long time. The car is returned, and he's checked in at the terminal, and there's a cab waiting for her to get in it and go home, and for once this doesn't feel like goodbye. It sucks, and they're really not anything anymore, but he feels kind of like he might be okay. He feels like his heart's just been put through a spin cycle, hasn't stopped for days and weeks and months on end, but now it's just come out, and it's a little battered, a little wrinkled, yeah, but...it might be better for it. It might be clean, and ready for use. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her into his chest, and presses a kiss to the top of her head. "If you call, I'll answer," he says into her hair. She lifts her head up, "I mean it."
"I'll answer, too," she smiles, and he smiles, and he kisses her, and he goes.
She does call, and he does answer. Things are a little stilted, at first, but they fall into it again - the easy rhythm of talking to someone you share no boundaries with - and talk for hours on end. He starts working at Burt's again (he'd wound up quitting the bar, and then Burt's, and staying home for almost every single one of his waking hours,) and the man looks genuinely happy to have him back. He works on cars during the day, hangs out at home at night, and they talk on the phone - sometimes they just breathe at each other while doing different things, and it doesn't matter, because even the slightest word can throw them into talking about nothing for hours and hours.
It's better than it used to be, even though it's nothing at all.
He's got more than enough money saved to get the hell out of Lima because his mom's been refusing to let him pay rent, and he's barely spent on anything other than gas, so he starts really thinking about it.
"I think you should," he can tell she's moving, maybe getting up from her seat at the kitchen counter to go sit on the couch, "it'll be good for you to get out of there, you know? You can always go back home, if you want to, but trying something new isn't that bad." He wants to tell her that if he's going to go anywhere, it should be to her, because he misses her more than he cares to admit, but he shakes it off.
"San keeps telling me there are apartments opening up in her building right and left...and her rent really isn't that bad," he runs a hand over his shaved head, "I'd only be two hours from you."
"Don't," she says it quietly, and he's confused, his heart thudding in his chest, "if you're going to do this, you should do it for you," she explains after a few moments of quiet thinking, "this needs to be selfish."
"It is," he informs, and he doesn't have to explain it further. He calls Santana when he hangs up, and she spouts something about it being about fucking time already, and that's that. He calls Santana's landlord, gets everything set up within a matter of days, then tells his mom (who is more than happy, to his surprise, to let him go) and his little sister (not as happy, but he promises to come back and see her soon). He packs up his truck after giving Burt his two weeks notice (and Burt telling him if he didn't leave by the next day, he'd come after him,) and gets in, calling Quinn on the way there, and putting her on speakerphone until the battery runs out.
The bar Santana has been working at hires him because he's big and scary looking (when he wants to be), and they're sick of people trying to grope their bartenders. He figures it's a pretty good job, and he gets the same percentage of the tips that the bartenders do, even though they're all pissed at him for it. It's a good deal - he has almost every day off, works at night, and manages to find another guy in the building (his name is Chet, and he barely speaks any english, but he's hulking and looks scarier than anyone Puck's ever met) to cover for him sometimes - sometimes being when he wants to drive down to New Haven.
He lets himself have a week, almost two, before making the trip to see her. She meets him in the parking lot, and there's a lot of strange deja vu about the moment he gets there. She practically gets into his truck to throw her arms around him, and he realizes how much he missed being able to feel her hands, her arms, her legs, her feet, her face touch him. They walk up to her apartment with every possible part they can manage touching - his arms are around her, and their legs press together as they walk, her face is in his shirt - but it's not enough, and they both know that. He presses her against the wall in the elevator, and everything is eerily familiar, but they ignore it, kissing desperately until the doors open. She drags him back to the couch, a smile on her lips as they press against his, "I forgot how much I missed you," she mumbles against him, "I forgot how much I missed missing you."
He shows her how much he agrees.
The New Haven trip start happening more frequently, and he decides to let Chet take over full time. Apparently one of Santana's friends, who hangs around the bar constantly but refuses to work there is into him, and he's into her right back (he thinks, because he doesn't really understand what Chet says when he talks,) so whatever, he's into the job and it works out, because Puck would rather be with Quinn.
They're out one night out by her when he decides to do an open mic - he brings his guitar up there with him, usually just because he knows Quinn likes to hear it, but also because he thinks maybe it'll be worth something, someday. He's rusty and rough during the little bit of time that he gets, but he plays and it feels good - he watches Quinn the whole time, and she stares at him with these big moony eyes that make him want to take her into the bathroom and fuck her until she screams, and then tell her he loves her more than anything.
Instead, he pulls her chair against hers when he's done, drapes her legs across his lap, and mumbles into her hair, "I think I could get used to things in this state."
Apparently her summer ethics class didn't mean less work than it would've been in the fall - "isn't that what a summer class is?" he'd asked, and she'd laughed at him - and by mid-July, he's losing out his time with her to a giant, old book. "Don't," she's studying on the couch and his hands somehow found its way to the underside of her knee, impossibly close to her inner thigh, "I have to finish reading."
He pouts, but slides his hand to her thigh anyway. She glares at him and kicks the top of his thigh, but he leaves his hand. "You can do both," he shrugs, smiling at her as he slips a hand up the leg of her shorts, happy to find she wasn't wearing any underwear.
"Puck," her brows are raised in a particular arch, one he knows means trouble, and she takes her hand off of the book, pushes up her glasses, and then pushes his hand out of her shorts, "I have to read." There's the faintest hint of a smirk on her face, and if it were anyone else he wouldn't have caught it, but this is her, and this is him, and he always catches it. He waits a few minutes, pretending he believed her lie, and then slips his hand back to its previous position, finding her damp folds with his fingers. She takes in a sharp breath and moves to shut the book, but he uses his other hand to keep it open.
"You can do both," he warns, looking up at her with a wicked grin, "read it out loud." She gives him an evil glare, but he's got a hand on her hip, and the other curling two fingers into her heat, and he knows she's got to listen. He pulls his fingers out slowly, agonizingly, and smirks at her before pushing them back in, "I want to learn ethics, too. Read it to me."
She licks her lips, her hips begging to thrust up into his hand, but he doesn't allow it, just stares at her and arches a brow, waiting, with his fingers dipped into her, for her to read. She shoots him a glare, opening her mouth and taking a deep breath, "Since the nineteenth century, we've made progress in," her breath hitches as his fingers move again, this time in a jerkier motion, but stop when she does. She frowns, "in understanding cultural diversity," his movements start back up, her words falling and rising in her unsteady, breathless voice, "and now realize that the social - fuck - conflict caused by 'do-good...ers'," she licks her lips, trying to keep her eyes focused as he works her harder, "was a bad thing. In the last cen-," she moans from deep in her throat as he feels his fingers brush over her g-spot as he pulls them out. He pushes them back, pressing down against it as she moans louder. He stills his movements, and she lets out a whimper, "century," her voice is tiny, and he loves that he can do this to her, starting up again, "or so, anthropology has exposed our fondness," he slides his other hand off of her hip, brushing it over her clit teasingly and her hips jerk upwards, "shit," she moans, and he looks up at her pointedly.
"Our fondness," she starts again, moving her hips in time with his hand - she was focused, now, she'd do what it took to get off, and he kind of loved that she was so determined. He moves his hand faster, slipping in a third finger, "for ethnocentrism," she pants, "the prejudicial view," he feels her walls pulsing around his hand, and he knows she's right there, "that," she lets her head fall back, "that," she pushes the book off of her stomach as he pinches her clit, "that," she comes around him, hard, with a loud moan and her hand gripping his shoulder tightly. He pulls his fingers from her after a long moment, and sucks them into his mouth, watching as her breathing remains erratic.
He straightens her shorts, picks up her book, and presses a kiss to her forehead as he puts it on her chest. "You have to read," he grins cockily, then makes his way into the kitchen to rummage around her fridge. Studying kind of made him hungry.
He feels like absolute shit, and Santana's been knocking on his door for the past like, twenty eight minutes because she knows he's in there, but he's not up for answering. "Puck," he gives another hard rap, "if you don't answer the goddamn door I'm going to cut your balls off."
He's so sick that he actually thinks about letting her, but ultimately stands up, wrapping a blanket around his body and walking to the door. He cracks it a bit and sticks his nose out, "What," he says, an edge to his voice.
Santana shoves the door all the way open, pushing past him and rolling her eyes, "It looks like tuberculosis exploded in this place," she covers her mouth with her hand, shooting him daggers with her eyes, "why the hell haven't you called a doctor?" He brushes her off and flops back on the couch, whining into the pillow. "I forgot you're a bitch when you're sick," she sighs, "do you need me to like, bring you soup, or something?" He throws a box of tissues at her head and stuffs his face into the space between the couch cushions and the back, and she throws them back, beaming him on the back of the head and stomping out in a huff.
It's almost five hours later when his door gets knocked on again, but the knocks are different this time. He's about five minutes into ignoring them when he hears a scrambling around outside the door - within seconds there's a key in the lock, and he watches from under his heap of blankets as Quinn appears in his living room, holding up the hide-a-key. He should've known - she'd bought him that stupid mat he'd hidden the key underso he'd have a place to hide it, she's the only one who'd even think to look for it. He groans, rolling onto his stomach and looking up at her, his eyes squinting, "Are you really here?"
She kneels next to the couch, running her thumb over his brow and sighing at how warm he was to the touch - or so he figures, because he knows to feel this cold under all these blankets must mean he's hot to the tips of her fingers. "I'm gonna go get some supplies, okay? I saw a Duane Reed on the corner in my cab. I'll be back in fifteen minutes, alright?" He nods, and she presses a kiss to his forehead, wrinkling her brow down at him before disappearing. He figures it was all a dream until she returns, holding a bunch of bags in her hands. He sits up a little and watches as she rips open a thermometer, shoving it under his tongue and bustling around his little kitchenette area, putting things into his fridge and dumping some Campbells chicken soup (his favorite) into a pot. She won't let him see how high his fever is (that's how he knows it's high) and sits on the couch with him, holding a cold washcloth to his forehead and rubbing his back until the soup is finished.
He drifts in and out of consciousness, but when he wakes up the blankets have been thrown off of his body, and he's covered in a thin layer of sweat. "I think your fever broke," she says quietly, looking down at him with worried eyes.
He musters up a sly grin and looks up at her, "No wonder it spiked when you got here."
She stays the next day and skips class, and he knows it's because she's worried about him - he usually gets sick in odd bursts, a high fever one day, and completely better the next, but she's always worried he's going to spike again right when he's out of her sight - but she doesn't say anything, so he doesn't either. He just lets her put on Peter Pan, and pretends it's not his favorite Disney movie as she sings along to all the songs.
She forces him to go bikini shopping with her in the end of August, and then tells him he's not allowed to come into the dressing room. It's probably punishment for skyping her during class the day before (or sending her dirty instant messages, one or the other, but he knew ethics was simple, and that she got bored during it. He'd just been trying to help out,) but he's seriously annoyed - it was cruel punishment, and unusual to say the least. He slumps on a little sofa outside the dressing rooms, and grumbles over the wall, "Why the hell do you need any more bathing suits, we're in Connecticut," he pauses, "and summer's like, over," and then realizes what she's doing. He frowns harder. Dirty tease.
She struts around him in tiny bathing suits, feigning innocence as she watches him squirm on the couch and batting his hands away when he tries to touch her. The last one - she saved it for last, he knows her - is the smallest thing he's ever seen. It's one of those wrap-around things around her chest, one that has no ties and makes her boobs look twice their size, and the bottoms show half of her ass off as she spins around. She smirks at him as she opens the dressing room door, raising her brow, and he stares at her body shamelessly. "That one," his voice is hoarse, and he clears his throat, not taking his eyes off of her, "I like that one."
She wrinkles her nose, shaking her head, "I don't think I do," she says, her voice sugary sweet, "I think I'm going to have a hard time getting out of it." He cocks a brow, and she cocks hers back.
He gets her out of it pretty damn quickly, if he does say so himself.
She starts work on a play for her drama class ("the most important class I've taken here so far," she keeps telling him, and he thinks she's getting more and more nervous about it as time goes on, rather than less), memorizing lines with him over the phone as he reads from a script she emailed him. "Let me get this straight," his face is twisted up in confusion, "she's nuts, right? Like, half the shit she's talking about doesn't even really happen?"
"She's...well," she stays quiet, "yeah, kind of." He shakes his head, shutting his laptop, "don't close your laptop, I have to keep going!" He stays quiet, "Please?" She lets out a soft laugh, then puts on the southern accent of the character she's playing, knowing how much he loved it, "I promise you'll get handsomely rewarded."
He lets out a grumble, opening it back up and picks up where they'd left off. By the beginning of November, when he goes to see the play, he knows more than half of the other characters lines and mouths them along with the actors. He might actually be better than them - but even so, he's never seen anyone shine quite as brightly as Quinn.
They buy a christmas tree at a farm in Pennsylvania, get it into his truck bed, and drive it to her apartment. Once it's upstairs and in the little stand, she goes absolutely apeshit, and he sits back and watches - he's only seen her decorate a tree once, and she'd been working with something way smaller (at sixteen, he'd only been able to afford a little, fake guy. This time, they were doing it right,) but even so he recognizes the process almost instantly. She walks around the thing, fluffing out the branches so they're all full, and then hands him a tangle of lights, smiling before patting his shoulder. He untangles.
She starts at the top, draping the whole thing with twinkling white lights and plugging the nubby end into an extension cord, slapping his hand when he moved to plug it in ("not until I'm finished," she'd tut-tuted, and he'd backed off). She hauled out a couple boxes of ornaments, and started arranging them to her liking, hanging them on the tree in a strange, zig-zagging pattern. When she's finished, she lets him plug the lights in, and they stand back, his arms around her and his chin on her shoulder. She points out a little ornament he'd never noticed before, and he lets go of her and moves closer, not stopping until he's practically nose-to-nose with the thing. It's a tiny menorah, and he scrunches up his nose, smiling at her, "You didn't have to ruin your tree," he says, with a laugh.
She shakes her head, and gives him one of those winning, Quinn smiles, "Nah, I think it's pretty perfect."
He's never realized how much Jack Daniels doesn't agree with Quinn until right now - she's smacking his arm hard, and yelling about something he doesn't really understand.
"Who the hell was that, Puck?" He shakes his head, not bothering to look down at her and continuing to drag her down the block - there were only a couple more until his apartment, and he didn't want to do this outside, if he had to do it at all, so he was trying to get back there as quickly as possible. Quinn shoves hard enough at him so he loses his grip on her and she stands in front of him, poking a finger hard into his chest. "What aren't you telling me?" He lets out an angry breath - one of Santana's friends had run into them at a bar, and apparently saying hello was a crime similar to actual manslaughter.
"What I'm not telling you is that you're fucking crazy," he bites, grabbing her arm and continuing to lead her down the block, "if you think that fake tits red head is even a blip on my radar."
"Who is a blip on your radar, then, Puck," she spits his name with more scorn than he thinks he has the power to comprehend, "please, tell me the requirements you have for someone to set you off." This was dangerous territory - he understood being drunk and jealous, because that was how he got, regardless of the fact that he knew she wouldn't stray, but he was having a hard time ignoring her right now because of her persistance.
"Quinn," his tone is warning - like a dad's, he realizes, but he doesn't know how else to do this, "this is stupid." He can see his front door - all he wants to do is get into his fucking front door.
"No, it's not!" Her voice is angrier, and louder than he thinks he's ever heard it, "You're just trying to fuckng get back at me with giant boobed sleazy skanks! Get over yourself, Puck, and just deal like a normal person! We weren't even really together when James happened, I would never cheat on you - I'm not you," she seems a little shocked at herself, and he just stares at her. Yeah, hed known they'd have to talk about this at some point, but he hadn't thought it would happen like this, not even in his wildest possible scenarios. He continues to stare at her as tears well in her eyes, and her hand claps over her mouth - she knows in the most sober of ways how terrible that all sounded, and he's glad.
The fact is, she still thinks of him like this, all these years later. She still sees him as the guy who is not good enough, the guy who she should expect to cheat on her, who she should expect not to be there, who she should expect to be terrible when he has proven seven thousand and ten times that that is not who he is. And honestly, if she still sees him like this now, he's got no idea how to fix it - he's tried all the ways he knows how, and now it's on her.
"Puck," her voice is quiet, "baby I didn't," she looks like she's having a hard time, but his brain's turned a lot slower in the past few minutes, and he just shakes his head, grabbing her arm and leading her in the direction of the apartment. She keeps trying to interrupt his quiet - "I'm," he silences her with a look. She waits a few long moments, "Baby, I'm," he looks again. "I'm sorry," he throws a t-shirt at her and walks into the living room, ignoring the fact that she's following him, "you know I didn't mean," he sets a bottle of advil on the kitchen counter, then moves past her and makes his way into the bathroom. He shuts the door and she leans against it, he can hear her weight pressed to it, "Puck," her voice quivers, "Puck please." He turns on the shower, though he's got no intentions on getting into it, and stares at the door until she pushes off of it. He listens as she gets into his bed and waits until he's sure she's passed out, then shuts off the shower, strips down to his boxers, and falls asleep on the couch.
She's cooking when he wakes up, and he's actually really surprised she's still there. He smells waffles and bacon, and he knows what she's doing. The dull ache in his chest tells him it's not going to work, as much as he wishes it would. He stands up and shuffles into his bedroom, putting on clothes before walking into the kitchen. She's still in his t-shirt.
He grabs the orange juice out of the fridge and drinks from the carton, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as she puts a waffle onto a plate and turns to him, holding it. "I made breakfast," her voice is timid, and he nods, taking the plate from her. He sits at the counter and stares at the waffle, trying not to look as shitty as he feels - he can feel it happening again, his brain chugging and chugging until it slowly turns off, and he wants nothing more than to stop it. He can't go back into hibernation.
She sits up on the counter with her legs crossed, her plate in her lap, and looks at him in concern, "I know I was a mess last night," she's quiet, "and I know I said some awful things to you, and I just hope you know I didn't mean them," she tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, "and that I'm sorry, okay?" He nods, takes a bite of his waffle. "I want everything to be okay," she adds, when he doesn't answer.
"It's not," his words come with an acidic laugh, and he sees her flinch, "I'm just telling the truth."
"What can I do to make it okay," she lifts her head, "tell me what you need." He shrugs a shoulder, shaking his head. He doesn't know what he needs, and he's not going to. She sighs and eats her breakfast, then hops off the counter and washes the plate. When she's finished, she stands in front of him. He fliches when she tries to press a kiss to his cheek, and he knows she's sadder than she's letting on. "I think I'm going to go back early," she says softly, "is that okay? I...so your thoughts can go straight?"
His thoughts are in a neat row, he just doesn't know how to voice them. He nods. She manages to hug him and whisper an, "I love you," before she goes.
"You didn't come up," she whispers into the phone so he has to actually strain to hear her. He sighs, but doesn't say anything, "I thought you'd be here hours ago, but you...you're home, aren't you," she doesn't ask it, so he doesn't answer. They're quiet. It's been a week of very, very quiet phone calls, and he's come to the conclusion that texting would be a lot easier. At least then he could ignore her without feeling like a total douche bag. "You're not allowed to shut off again, okay?"
"Okay," he agrees, after a moment of thought. He's been thinking that shutting off again would kind of suck, so maybe avoiding it is the best idea.
He gets pulled out of sullen, brooding silence because of a letter. He drives all the way up to New Haven because of a letter. He knocks on her door at two thirty in the morning because of a letter, and when she finally opens the door, he slaps it into her chest and pushes past her through the door. "You can't just get your mail delivered to my apartment, Q," he grumbles, rooting through her fridge and pulling out a bottle of water, uncapping it and taking a long sip, "you don't see me having my girl scout cookies delivered here, do you?"
He doesn't realize how much he missed her until she's standing right in front of him wearing only a t-shirt that grazes the tops of her thighs. He needs to get her out of the habit of answering the door like that, he thinks, but that's for later.
There's a glint in his eye that he's pretty sure she's already noticed, and she's got her arms crossed over her chest when she answers, "Girl scout cookies," she arches a brow, the only thing giving away how happy she actually is to see him being the tiniest of smiles on her lips, "what, are you a fifty eight year old widow, now?"
He gives her a sly grin, then shrugs a shoulder, "Do I look like a fifty eight year old widow?" He steps closer to her, and even though things are not solved, he can't keeps his hands off of her. He slides them up her legs, over her thighs, rests them on her bare hips, and he doesn't miss the noise that catches in the back of her throat.
"You most certainly don't," she says in a low, sexy voice, and then gets on her toes and kisses his lips. They barely manage to make it to her bedroom, and even when they do they don't make it to the bed. Her shirt is off and his pants are down, and he's pressing her up against the door and pushing into her before it's even comprehensible. Everything is fast, and hard, and good - his hands are rough against her smooth skin, and his pace is near-frantic, but they both need it, and they come hard, him right after her. They catch their breath, and then he carries her to the bed, laying her down easily and crawling in next to her, then deciding after a moment that he wanted to be closer. He pulls her on top of him, watching as she digs her chin into his chest the way she knows he likes, and he runs his fingers through her hair. They lay like that for a while - it could be an hour, maybe two, - and then she speaks. "I'm sorry," she whispers, "it was all old stuff...it's not how I feel now, you know that, don't you? That I'm the one that doesn't deserve you, even though you think otherwise?"
"I don't know all that," he's smiling in a tiny way, "but we don't have to-,"
She cuts him off, "no," she presses her finger to his lips, "two things. One, you're going to let me apologize, so listen. I am sorry, okay? I didn't mean what I said, and I love you," she leans his forehead against his, "and I know you love me back. I know you do," he nods, urging her to continue, "and the second thing is about that letter," she bites on her lip, looking away from him and he laughs, because she's nervous and why the hell did she still get nervous around him, "if...we lived in the same place," she looks back at him, and he squeezes her again to get her to keep talking, "my letters wouldn't be coming to your place. They'd be coming to ours. Just...pointing that out," she gives him a shy smile, and he lets out a breath.
"It's a good point," he's been quiet for a few long seconds, and when he opens his mouth, that's what comes out. They lock eyes, "a really, really good point."
Santana tells him she doesn't understand why he signed a lease on an apartment if he was just going to move out in less than eight months, and he shrugs, "I had to test the waters."
She apes his words back at him with an annoyed voice, rolling her eyes and throwing some of his clothes into a box, "You're an idiot," she's smiling, "don't be stupid this time." She tapes the box shut, and before she goes she hugs him - he thinks maybe they've been friends all along.
He's unpacking a box when he feels arms wrapped around his torso from the back, and he lets her down before turning around to kiss her. "You were my first roommate, you know," she says, when they pull apart and he's put his little glass jar of guitar picks down. He knows.
"I'm gonna be your last," he shrugs, his tone laughably noncommittal in comparison to the meaning of the words he was saying, "you know it's not 'cause of me at all, you just like the familiarity."
He knows it's way more than that, and so does she - they don't have to say it out loud when it's staring them so blatantly in the face.
She's in class one day, early in the fall, when he finds himself on google maps remembering the evil 666 miles that plagued them what seems like forever ago. He traces the six miles between the apartment and Yale's campus with his finger, realizing that this is the first time in a long time he's been so close to home.