Note From The Author- - So I've decided to put together this series of little one shots that didn't seem to flow as full stories. I did this for my second favorite show, CSI: NY, which used to hold the top spot before Glee. : ) I hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer—I don't own the characters of Glee
Rachel and Noah had a very strange relationship. Their brief dating life had been fraught with ridicule from others and consisted mostly of them making out and then barely listening to each other speak about things the other didn't care about.
But the bottom line was that whether they liked it or not, the two of them had a connection. Puck felt a strange need to protect her and to make sure that any guy she ended up with knew that they had dated, just in case they doubted that messing with her would be a bad idea.
Rachel felt oddly comfortable with him, particularly given their slushy history. Even when she was with someone else she couldn't seem to tamp down her attraction to him, and in her heart she truly believed that there was more to him than the bad boy that most people tended to see.
They kept coming back to each other, as friends and teammates, and always brushing up to romantic interests without acting on them. Which was why Noah was the one who found her crying in the choir room with her iPod headphones firmly in place and her eyes squeezed shut against the tears.
She and Finn had made a pretty good go of it after Regionals. They had stayed together through the summer and done pretty well through the beginning of the school year, but then things had gone downhill. They had started fighting, stopped wanting to sing together in Glee, and that day at rehearsal everything had devolved into a loud and explosive fight that had ended their relationship and sent Finn storming from the room.
After Mr. Schue had cancelled practice for the day, Rachel had stayed behind in the choir room. It had occurred to Puck that she hadn't left with the rest of them, so after he dropped his crap off in his car he went back, and that was when he found her.
Without saying a word, he walked up to her and pulled one of the headphones from her ears. He put it to his own as she looked up at him with startled tear filled brown eyes as he did. The song was one he knew fairly well, but hearing the words 'there's a fine, between love and a waste of your time' solidified for him just how heartbroken the girl really was over this; and for the first time he realized that maybe Rachel and Finn hadn't just been blowing smoke when they talked about the fact that they were each others' first loves.
That strange connection between them kicked in as those big eyes of hers locked on his, and before he knew it Puck was sitting on the chair next to her and pulling Rachel into his arms. For a moment she tensed, and then her body went limp as she began to sob into his shoulder. Her tiny hands fisted in his shirt and his hand moved soothingly over her back and hair as she let everything out.
Later on they would probably try to pretend that the time they spent there had never happened, but for the moment he would hold her, and she would let him; and that connection between them would give them both comfort.