AU: Puckleberry. AN: This chapter is like an introduction to what is to come, call it an epilogue if necessary.
Chapter one,
Puck was a lost cause, or so everybody said. He had been sent to juvie, got Quinn pregnant and most of all, didn't know what he was doing with his life. Rachel knew he wouldn't listen to her, whether she was wearing clothes or no clothes. She was a person Puck couldn't relate to and she didn't want to annoy him any more than he was, but when Rachel overheard him singing in the choir room one morning, she couldn't help but feel bad for him. Quietly, she stood by the door, listening to him singing a melody she had never heard of, which meant it never existed until Noah Puckerman invented it.
"You know, listening to somebody play without making yourself known is rather rude." He spoke, he hadn't turned to face me but Rachel imagined he knew who it was and that she had been stood there, silent, for a while. She stepped forward and sat on the piano bench behind him. "Consider yourself lucky, if I wasn't so pissed off, I would have so thrown a slushy on you." Rachel scoffed, there was never a nice side to Puck, if you could find it ever since Quinn broke it, you were lucky.
Santana skipped past, over the past month, they had grown to be friends, so when the Spanish lady called her name, she wasn't filled with fear. "Hey Rachel!" She turned around and saw that Santana was gesturing to Puck with a puzzled look on her face. Rachel shrugged my shoulders in response and tapped the space next to her, inviting San in to intrude on the awkward and unkind moment. "Puck, what's going on with you? You look like a woman in here all by yourself."
Noah turned around and smirked at the sassy Latina. She flipped her hair and twirled it around her finger. "You and Berry are friends now?"
Surely, Santana nodded her head and smiled down at Rachel, something she thought would never happen. There was a point in their friendship that Rachel thought she would never return from, her and Santana were opposite ends of the same branch and Rachel just wanted to be friends with her. Unfortunately, at the beginning, she didn't find the appeal of it and after endless months of bullying, Rachel stood up to her. That was when Santana decided she packed a mean punch and it was probably better to be friends with her rather than enemies. Ever since that day, they had basically became inseparable.
"Well that sure is a sight for sore eyes." He huffed, Puck got up and picked up his guitar that he had left in the centre of the choir room. If he wasn't angry already, she would have warned him of his incorrect use of a musical instrument and that he should treat it with respect. "I'm sure Quinn is pleased with that." He spat her name as if it was venom in his mouth. Rachel rolled my eyes, she knew he just wanted to rant about her, and of course around the biggest bitch in the school it was possible. Santana knew she was a bitch, people could say anything mean about anyone, if it wasn't Brittany and Rachel now, and she would most likely agree. "What is she doing? Getting pregnant with another man's baby and pushing it off as his best mates?"
Puck had every right to be angry, if the rumours going around the school were true, then apparently he had wanted to tell everybody he was the father from the beginning. It was Quinn who was wearing the pants and choosing what to do. She strung the two lads along for the fun of it, and when she was bored, she told everybody the truth.
However, the way she broke the news was far from softly and it instantly ruined the friendship Puck and Finn had shared since they were little. Rachel felt sorry for both parties, but after Finn had flirted with her just to make sure the Glee club could survive, she no longer took pity on him and decided that the only person in the situation who was completely sorrowful was Puck – although he did sleep with his best friend's girlfriend and she didn't condone that.
Comforting Puck, Santana started shouting about Quinn and how rude she was, saying that she had never trusted her since the day the words 'I'm pregnant' crossed her lips. Rachel felt like a spare part and before the bell for first period rang, she left the two feisty badass students alone. For some reason, Rachel felt like it wasn't her place to say anything mean about Quinn because she didn't actually know her very well. Of course she was aware of the fact that Quinn was the one behind most of her bullying, and maybe if Quinn didn't exist then she could have a chance with Finn, but other than that, Quinn Fabray was a complete mystery to the miniature brunette.
Soon, Rachel was sat in her seat in the maths room. Her seat was the first one as you entered the room, first table, first row and on the left hand side. Nobody shared with her, probably because people considered her weird, but also because she voluntarily sat at the front, where the teacher was able to see her, and everything that she did. The popular kids preferred the rows of seats at the back of the room, where they weren't expected to do much work and their phones weren't visible. The teacher had already informed them what paper to turn their books to, and to start working off the questions in the book, when Santana and Puck rolled in, glaring at her.
Surprisingly, the pair sat down to her right and dumped their books on the table with a loud thud. Some of the cheerleaders in the back began laughing, waiting for Santana and Puck to play some sort of sick trick on Rachel, and she half expected the same too. "Where did you sneak off too?" Puck whispered, leaning across Santana who was balancing on two of the chair's four legs. Rachel looked bewildered, she hadn't realised that the pair had acknowledged her absence from the choir room seeing as they didn't say anything when she had left. "Huh?" He demanded and Rachel shrugged in response.
Balancing on all four legs, like you were supposed to, Santana interrupted the mini conversation between Rachel and Puck and tapped Rachel's leg. "Word on the street is, Quinn's coming back to school." Rachel nodded, even though she wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean. Was Santana preparing her for the change in their friendship when the head cheerleader returned? "But seeing as she's still pregnant, she won't be allowed back on the Cheerio's…" Leaving the sentence to settle in the air, Santana watched Rachel process the information.
"I'm not joining the Cheerio's."
"Damn, she figured that out quick." Puck said, his voice a normal volume which distracted the class from their work and attracted them to the scene at the front desk. "Do y'all want to take a picture of me?"
A cheerio from the back row shouted back 'yes please' and Puck rolled his eyes.
Santana nudged me, and then pointed to the uniform she was wearing. "Come on Rach, just imagine… You can be on the Cheerio's with me and Brit, and when Quinn comes back she won't be able to send you back to being the nerd you always were."
Slowly, Rachel thought over the idea, it certainly had some appealing qualities, and the colour red matched perfectly with her skin tone. But she didn't want to become the person she had always avoided, people like Quinn weren't just born evil, high school hierarchy turned them like it. And that was something Rachel never wanted to experience, she liked her for who she was, and she was going to live by her true being. "Come on!" Puck pleaded, his green eyes and hazel orbs pleading with her. Let's just say, he pushed her over the edge. She nodded her head in confirmation and accepted the hug off Santana. "You'll never regret it girl!" Puck exclaimed, stretching over Santana to hug her. If there was any reason to why he enjoyed this so much, it was probably because it would ruin Quinn's pathetic games and he wanted nothing more than to make his ex-girlfriend suffer.
That must have been the only reason, right?