AN: If Heartbreak Warfare had a sibling, this would be it.
This is not a love story, because life does not come to end with a fairy tale, nor is that how it begins.
It begins earlier for Puck than for her, the grape slushie leaving his hand as easily as he bought it. The first time he did it was the third week of freshmen year, before he knew her name and before he became involved with Glee. He had done it on purpose, there were no accidents within the wall of their high school. He had a reputation to protect, and that's all there is to it, really. She just possessed the unfortunate of being the one in his way. It happened accidentally, as most great things often do.
He left her covered in purple before he would come to understand grape was her favorite, before he could come to know she loved plums and her room was painted a vivid shade of purple, not the cotton candy pink as everyone would imagine. Everyone has imagined the color of her room but no one has imagined actually setting foot inside it.
Rachel has a methodical approach to cleaning, one she has perfected to an art. She's been covered in cold ice a number of times that she has the science of it to a routine, a routine she's learned as well as her dance steps or songs. She's memorized the art of routine the way she's memorized his eyes, the green glimmering in his face, the freckles underlying his jaw. She begins with a walk to the showers, several steps left then right, left and she walks in, her clothes falling to the ground behind her. She shampoos her hair, shampoos significantly to ensure that the sticky texture has been removed.
He keeps to the routine every other day, staining more white shirts than Rachel can count, fragmenting her self-esteem piece by piece. She can't fathom why a boy would grow to be so hurtful, vindicate to a girl he doesn't know. She doesn't question his motives, nor does she see a reason as to why she should. She's almost afraid of the answer she would receive if she did ask.
(Wash, rinse, repeat. Those are how her days go)
She has no friends to lean on for support, after all, she supposes her abrasive personality is to be deemed the cause. That's when it happens, when she doesn't even have the support of Glee as these attacks commence. That's when she stops caring about the others. She knows, knowsknowknows that if they didn't need her singing abilities, none of them would speak to her to begin with. That, and their jealousy because clearly, she is better than everyone in that room. They can deny it, and they can lie through their teeth about it, but it's still a clear and undeniable fact; she can sing circles around them. The sooner they realize that, the quicker everything will become better, the faster tensions amongst the twelve will ease.
After two months, she comes to accept these slushies as part of her every day life, an extracurricular activity she participates in but cannot write on an application, and she no longer wears white. She grows to detest the purity of the color, the cleanness it stands for. She's tainted and marked, and she can't fathom why.
If she falls asleep, and dreams, which she rarely does, she dreams of her mother. She loves her fathers but she would love a chance to have a mother instead, especially in times of cruelty as these. She misses her mother in more ways than she knows how to count. She's never met the woman, but she's marked her as her own; her mother, not a mother. The pain is deep and it cuts, she finds herself feeling fragile, and on her worst days, she bites the inside corner of her cheek until it bleeds and she can feel her mouth fill with the metallic after taste.
She's surprised when he joins Glee, even more perplexed when the slushies cease. She doesn't understand why but she doesn't ask, she figures staying silent is the safest bet of all. They participate in the same activity but she doesn't see that as substantial cause for the stoppage. Nothing happens, nothing out of the ordinary. She continues to sing, he dances. She ignores the looks he gives to her, the casual smirks dancing across the back. She feels the heavy stares, the heat radiating from his eyes.
(She can feel his eyes before she can feel him)
The morning their relationship begins, he carries a grape slushie in his hand and a straw behind his ear, a peace offering of sorts. He gives and she takes, the beginning has no correlation to its end. Later, at the final breaking point, she'll come to understand she gives gives gives, and he takes takes takes what he sees fit. The peace offering is simple, understated at its core. He uses it to make amends, he has to be the one to deliver her an olive branch. He gives her the slushie, watching a cautious look filter through her eyes, and he doesn't say anything else. Much like everything else between them, he leaves his syllables implied.
That afternoon, bailing on football practice, he drives through the streets until he finds the location he needs. He visits her for help with Glee, and one thing leads to another, he's laying across the covers of her bed, an outlier in the plum swirls of her room. She tells him to leave, she can't be with someone who isn't courageous enough to sing a solo, a feeble excuse that whispers across her own ears. She doesn't tell him that visions of the other boy swayed across her eyes when his lips touched hers.
Stunned, a feeling of bewilderment and shock simmers through her when she sees him walk across the room, his fingers strumming across the guitar strings to sing her Neil Diamond. He sings to her, a raspy cool baritone falling on her ears, murmuring soft promises of good times. She finds herself singing along, in spite of herself, and in spite of the nagging feeling that begins to susurrate across the back of her mind. She sings back, and everyone around her sings along, and it almost feels like the movies. The serenade, a song sung to win her over, is the second cultivation in their relationship.
The relationship lasts all but a week, the hazy afternoons steaming through the back seat, leaving a sun kissed trail across the skin. Afternoons will turn to nights, and she will stare at him as he moves on top of her, the moonbeams reflected, glittering across his eyes. There are no exchanges of love, there are no meaningful declarations. They both become aware of the reality of this, this will never mean more than it should, there is no growth potential to be found from their union. They're different, everyone can say one is better than the other. She is bound for the bright lights of the stage, and his path will take him on a divergent path from hers. As drops of cold water fall across her face that seventh day, she'll come to understand what everyone has known all along. She makes a decision, the relationship has to be killed before it progresses. She refers to it as a relationship, though it's not the case, not in the truest sense. There are no words that her thoughts can contrive to provide a description, no thoughts sound enough to evoke what has transpired between them.
The olive branch, the one he constructed to soften the coldness underneath her eyes, will degenerate at the close of seven days. She breaks up with him that soft Fall day on the bleachers, the sun shining softly on the football field, a casual wind blowing past. There is no practice on the field that afternoon, but she finds him in his normal spot, his elbows propped up against the seats behind him. She will wear a dark green and black sweater, the colors contorting themselves to fit the darkness, the sickness that their relationship will later become.
(She wants to pretend this week never happened, she wants to destroy these clothes once the words escape from the back of her throat, once the words bounce from the tip of her tongue. She can't believe she lowered herself beneath her standards. Her standards were simple enough. Don't do drugs. Don't do alcohol. Do Julliard. Don't do boys who jeopardize futures.)
Puck isn't her first choice and she's sixteen, she refuses to settle; she knows it well enough to understand that he could only bring her down, taking everything she's worked for with it. She's young, young enough to know that love affairs at their age aren't meant to last forever. She is destined for greater things than this town, than being with a boy who refuses to gather his affairs into a tidy state of order. He does what he wants, and he marches to the beat of his own drum, and she finds this oddly unsettling. His behavior, a flurry of sexual innuendos and affairs, does little to soothe the feelings inside. The boy, the boy who engages in promiscuous behavior on a daily basis, who doesn't believe in the furthering of his education.
Puck has no interest in being a leading man to her role on center stage, he has little interest in anything regarding her dreams. The only time he looks at her, really looks at her, is when they're curled together in his backseat. She can't begin a future like this, with a half assed partner. He's an unsuitable choice for a future. He's an unsuitable choice for anything.
She offers to be friends out of politeness, she doesn't foresee an end where they're friends anyway, an end where they're left with anything more than hating each other. There is no need to engage in a friendship with a juvenile delinquent. Surely her fathers taught her better than that.
(She is relieved when he does not accept this offer of friendship, her hand on his shoulder for the second to last time.)
"We weren't friends before, and we're not going to be friends now." She watches him stand to leave the bleachers, his footsteps echoing beneath him, his shoes pounding into the steps. These words don't hurt, she was realistic about their prospects for a relationship. She doesn't make a move to follow him, he meant nothing to her, after all. She sits, her elbows propped against the seats behind her, and she watches the setting sun fall into the sky, she stares through the orange hues. The orange hues that will transform into red, a bleeding sky, indicative of the future to come.
When he pulls her into the closet the next day, they have sex against the wall of the janitor's equipment. She's not that type of girl to lose her virginity in the dark corners of a closet, but she kisses him back, and she doesn't know what type of girl she is anymore. She doesn't argue, she doesn't fight against his hands skimming across her curves. It isn't make up sex for their break up the day before. It's rough and it's hard, and she bangs her hip on the corners of the shelves. When it's over, she hasn't found any words to tell him, there is nothing she could say. It's just sex, she convinces herself, there's nothing more for it to mean. It's just practice for when she finds a different boy someday. Her mouth tastes bitter, she doesn't let him kiss her again.
This will become a routine, a downward spiral similar to the flights of kamikaze pilots. She knows this is self-destructive, she feels it when she touches him, but she can't bring herself to stop. It may be him who initiates the contact, that first rush, but the way they move, one would observe she was in control. They will have sex in the pool located in the basement, the one where hardly anyone goes. They will have sex in closets, and classrooms. Pressed against walls, on top of desks, the quiet corners where no one will ever see. They prefer to keep it that way, secrecy is paramount in continuing an illicit activity.
Secrecy works well for them, nobody suspects a thing. They will ignore each other in Glee, in the hallways, in school. She will give him looks of disgust, he will look past as her, repulsed. Quinn doesn't say anything, Finn never notices. If anybody else notices anything, they never say a word. There isn't much to say, after all. Puck is well, Puck, and Rachel's perfect.
Rachel is perfect, as perfect as one can be. She receives stellar marks on her academic record, she can outshine them all in Glee and now, now she has a boyfriend. This, this, is what high school is supposed to be about. Boyfriends, and excellence; not hiding in storage closets for quick fixes. She smiles as she thinks of her boyfriend, the earnest boy with his innocent sweetness. He doesn't ramble, he lets her dominate the conversation; he looks at her with eyes of awe. They've been dating for a month, and things have been going splendidly, splendidly, and he picks her up tonight, a one month anniversary dinner at the restaurant where they met.
"What did you do with Jonathan?" She asks hesitantly when she sees Puck walking up to her, Jonathan never coming back from the bathroom. Her voice comes in a whisper in case her ears would prefer not to hear the question. She doesn't know why she can't just be happy, why she can't just go on a date like normal girls do; a normal date with no drama.
He shrugs, putting up his palms to indicate a clueless expression, and a smirk filters into his eyes. "He left. Of his own free will." He doesn't say anything about the hundred it took to bribe him to leave.
She gives him a look of disgust, and walks out of the restaurant, the ruffles of her skirt spinning beneath her. She doesn't get far when he catches up to her, nor does she recommend having sex against a concrete wall.
"I hate you." She says, no longer surprised at the words leaving her mouth. She has grown to despise him, despise him for what he engages her in but she can't bring herself to stop. She's surprised at how easily she's grown accustomed to him, how easily she wants him despite how easily he evokes feelings of hatred inside. He can only look at her, his response a refined smirk on his lips. He'll lean in, pushing her back against the wall that he just took her on, and lowers his lips to her ear, his breath flush against her skin.
"Tell me something I don't know." When she looks back at him, she realizes she's never seen that look in Jonathan's eyes; the look of pure want, and she wonders if maybe she hates Puck less than she's come to believe. Somebody wants her. She would cry at this, and be overjoyed, if not for the realization of who wants her.
"You mean nothing to me, and I will prove it to you if I have to."
He will walk away, and she will stay longer, she will get rid of the shakes he just left her with. She gently puts on her shirt, wincing from the bruises his hands have left across her rib cage.
(His hands will have cut across her skin, jagged criss crosses that will fall through her skin, attaching themselves to her blood.)
It's dark in the room, they're using the darkened corners of the janitor's closet again; she won't see the faint outline of the scrapes across her skin at the moment but she knows they will be there, proof this still happens.
(She will come home, and get undressed in front of the mirror, and her hands will trace the discolorations, and she will not cry. She doesn't believe in crying, crying is a tell tale mark of the weak. Rachel Berry is not weak, and she does not fucking cry.)
"You're irrelevant." He says, catching up to her one day in the silence of the halls. She turns to look at him, no longer surprised by how vile he can be. She doesn't know why she bothers to respond anymore, she should have taken this for what it was, is.
"You're one to talk. You're only known around here for sleeping your way through the majority of the girls, and teachers in this school, and because you're the best friend of the quarterback, the shining star of our high school."
He rolls his eyes. "Yeah, well you're one of those girls I've fucked, and you're not fucking amazing, I've had better sex. You're just pissed you're not sleeping with Finn instead. Maybe if you put out more, people would pay more attention to you."
Slamming her locker door, she begins to walk away from him, abruptly turning when she's halfway down the hall. She looks at him, and he can't pinpoint if her smile is of sadness or of happiness, or created with a little bit of both.
"I'll take these four years of high school of being known as a nobody instead, and know that I'll still be someone when I leave these halls, which is more than I can ever ever ever say for you. No one is going to know your name when you're done here, and fuck your opinion. I could care less what you think of my bedroom abilities, I can't be that inadequate. You keep coming back, don't you?" Turning on her heel, she walks out the doors, into the bright glare of the winter sun.
(Everything becomes easier with anger; hate takes on a different hue, colors of violence, deepening black and blues. The darker colors turn to yellows, lightening with each passing day but if she squints, she can see the residual effects in the mirror)
The night they sever their ties is the most painful of all. The night, she sneaks him into her room through her bedroom window, she tells him this affair has run its course, she's disinterested in continuing. There is nothing left to be salvaged amongst their ruins, and she's exhausted of discovering new traces of bruises across her body. She's drained from the new methods of punishment they find for each other, the new causes for revenge. They will fight, amongst the corners of her soundproof room, their bodies left to be bruised and bloodied. In the dark creases of the night, they will fold.
(She'll give as good as good as she gets. He will have gaping cuts across his face from her nails, she will notice bruises will sprout on the insides of her hips from when he pressed his hands across the bone too hard.)
His teeth will scrape against the skin across her neck, leaving a pattern of marks, the calling card he leaves her with in the morning. There is no softness beneath his touch, there are no gentle caresses. She doesn't tell him to slow down, or to ease his strength against her.
(She'll do the opposite, she'll push into him and encourage this. She wants to make the pain last.)
There is only the harshness of reality, the darkness of the night closing in to suffocate them both.
(In the morning, her fingertips will trail to the bruising, and she'll stifle her tears, covering the burst blood vessels with a multicolored scarf.)
And he will leave her in the middle of the night, he will leave as easily as he came, and when the morning comes, she will have convinced herself nothing happened, a thought reinforced when she walks into him by accident.
"Watch where you're going, Berry." Rachel inhales at the sharp edge in Puck's voice, a breath she holds longer than she should. She watches him walk away, and she wills the breath back into her body.
She doesn't regret their trysts together, despite appearances to the contrary. To admit regrets would to admit she's erred in judgment, and Rachel does not do errors in judgment, or admit to weaknesses. She doesn't have weaknesses. Ever.
"You're a bitch." He tells her one day after Glee, finding her sitting on the floor of the girls bathroom, a refugee of hers where she cries when she loses another solo. She cries until the sobs overtake her body, and each breath, and when it's over, she can only look at him. It is the first set of words he's spoken to her in several weeks, the first phrase that's escaped from those lips she's tasted before. She would have thought he would be more eloquent, more anything instead of purposely seeking her out to insult her, to damage her with his words. "You can't be successful without being a team player, and you're a fucking failure at that."
"Don't you dare, don't you dare talk to me about success, and being a team player. You know nothing about being successful, and the only time you're a team player is when you're throwing freshmen into the fucking dumpster. At least I want something out of this fucking life I have to live every day, at least I have goals. You're never going to make it out of this town. You're a fucking Lima loser, and you always will be. Don't fool yourself into thinking you're something you're not. You're going to breathe and die here."
She means these words, she knows they're more than true in his case. She says the words, and she feels the weight tensed around her heart lessen. She doesn't see why he should be the only to have it hurt. She knows she's hurt him, she can see it in his eyes. She watches his hands clench and unclench, the whites of his knuckles clearly evident. He moves his hand, and she's almost afraid he'll hit her, but he punches through the wall instead. His words come out in a ragged whisper, and she almost feels guilty for what she said. Almost, but not quite.
"You're doing to die alone, and if it wasn't for me, you would have died a spinster. Nobody fucking likes you." She doesn't say anything, not right away, when he says this to her, turning her back to the mirror and straightening her hair.
(She refuses to believe this is true, she will have a successful career with the perfect canonical family, and they're all going to be fucking jealous, and regret the day they were less than amazing to her.)
She lifts her head up, and notices the tint of a cold glint reflecting in his eyes, and her mouth moves upwards, a slow smile framing her face. She laughs bitterly before she speaks, surprising them both by the harshness of her personality.
"Don't talk to me about people liking me. You got the head cheer leader pregnant, and you betrayed your best friend; you're letting him take the fall for a role he has no involvement in. You're hardly in a position to judge, given your status in our high school, let alone our community. I'd keep my mouth closed and reserved for other things if I were you."
Fittingly enough, she was the first person to find out about Quinn, and the real paternity of her child. She couldn't believe it when she first overhead Puck and Quinn arguing about it, and she knew Puck was low; she was just, apparently, unaware of how low he could really be.
"People may not like me, but they're going to hate you, and then, then, you're going to join me about the bottom of the social totem pole. I'll try not to laugh at your descent but I make no promises."
She walks out the bathroom door, not bothering to give him a second glance. She doesn't have to look back to know he's turned ashen from her words, whiter than a ghost.
(He is a fuck up, he is. He's turned the act of failure into an art form, a poor one at that. He doesn't even have to charge admission for everyone to watch. Everyone knows this, everyone knows the only thing Puck concerns himself are with fucking, and more fucking but watching Berry walk out that door, he swallows the wave of sickness that arises and wonders why he couldn't be more)
She sees the stares that follow her around school, the questioning glances he's given her way. He's waiting for her to break, to admit the truth; and when she continues the upkeep of her silence, he's still unsure of how disappointed he is. Somebody has to break the silence, and she's a natural fit. That mouth never stops moving, at least, not until he needs it. She never looks back, but she never tells, either. She spends the days the way she's always spent them, detached from her surroundings.
He doesn't seek her out for sex and cheap thrills anymore; not when she knows. It changes something between us, something they can neither define or are willing to acknowledge. He finds there's plenty of willing girls, girls that look at him with adoration and longing, girls that don't understand what he's really about. Berry took it at face value, she understood that shit; sex is just sex, and he's just the way he's always going to be.
Puck doesn't miss her, either. The bitch was crazy, and took it to a notch higher than everyone he's known.
When the scandal breaks, when someone says something something, she finds him on her door step at a quarter to one in the morning, his eyes vacant and a visible swelling around his eye. She looks at him, leaning against the edge of her door, and staring at her expectantly, judging.
"Are you just going to stand there and stare?"
"Why are you here? Don't you have friends you could visit? Whores you could sleep with?"
He shrugs, attempting to mask his indifference at the bitterness of her tone. He expected it but expectations didn't lessen the cut.
"You were right before, nowhere else for me to go. Try not to laugh, I know it may be difficult for you."
She doesn't say anything in response, she knows it isn't the best time to further kick him, not when he's down enough as is. Still, she pauses; she's not sure she wants to go down this path. This was what she supposed to detangle herself from.
Despite the warning bells inside her head, she lets him stay. He spends the night curled against her frame, overwhelming her and she can't bring herself to say anything when they oversleep for school, and she finds his fingers intertwined with hers.
They've been awake for an hour, immobile and laying in a bed of tension when she sits up, hugging her knees into her chest. She doesn't stare at him, her eyes directed towards the glimmering hues of the morning sky. It is beautiful outside, the kind that hurts when one stares too hard. There is sunshine, and bright colors, and she wonders if the sky is laughing at her. He doesn't say anything, taking her movement as a cue to leave, even though it wasn't. She just wanted to talk. He barely looks at her and when he walks out, he walks out as quietly as he came. Later, after he's disappeared, she finds herself laying on the covers, tracing the warmth he left behind.
He hasn't touched her in weeks, and she's made no move to bridge the distance between them. He comes over and he stays, and they don't do anything; he doesn't even say anything.
(He shows up because it's convenient and she's the only one who tolerates his face, she was right; it's not as if he has any other friends to turn to)
"Do you love her?" She asks one night, the nights that have turned into a pattern with them. He's laying flat on his back, and she's on her stomach, her eyes keenly focused on him. She's stared at him frequently enough that she's memorized the jagged edges of his face, the curved lines by his chin. His breaths are shallow and soft, and she finds herself echoing his movements. She wants to reach out and touch him, any body part will do but her fingers miss the signals from her brain.
"I don't." He says curtly, turning over to his side, and she falls sleep with questions on the insides of her eyes, spinning and spinning to wonder if he's lying. She convinces herself it wouldn't matter if he did; the two of them aren't supposed to be anything, anyway.
But that doesn't stop her from trying, from making an attempt to know him.
"We don't know each other." She whispers to him in the dark one night, her voice mirthless and tightening against her. We don't know each other. She repeats in her mind, silently and doubting. She finds her gaze lingering against him, burying down like a weight.
He turns away from her, like he's done all these nights before. "There's nothing to know." He can feel her stiffen next to him, and he doesn't care; she's the only person who talks to him these days and he still can't make himself stop hurting her out of spite.
(As if she was responsible for this whole damn affair)
He stops visiting her after that and she tells herself it doesn't matter.
Months after the incident, after Quinn has given birth and Puck has signed the adoption papers, Rachel goes on a date. Surprisingly enough, it's not with Finn. She's stopped giving him those eyes, staring at him with adoring devotion once this whole mess with Puck began. She tries not to laugh bitterly, how absurd that she's gotten over one boy by getting under another. She shakes her head, and tries to vanquish these thoughts. She goes on a date with a nice boy, a nice boy who doesn't try to kiss her good-night, and when she comes home, she doesn't bother turning on the light, falling into bed fully clothed.
"That hurt, Berry. That hurt." Puck says quietly, wincing.
Rachel buries her head into her pillow at the sound of his voice, kicking off her shoes. Her head lays there, like an ostrich in the sand, and she tries to ignore the waves of tension emitting from his body.
"Why are you here?"
(He can't answer a question he doesn't know the response to)
"Did you have a nice date?"
"It was fabulous. We went to dinner and a movie, and then necked in the backseat."
She doesn't have to see him to know he's currently smirking at her, the way he usually does with such things. She's no longer surprised by this; lately, she can judge his facial expressions by how casually his legs tangle in her bed, how easily his body moves.
"Did you put out?"
"Of course I did."
He laughs at her tone, knowing full well how her evening ended, but he decides to play along.
"Figures."
The room grows quiet when she doesn't respond, and he realizes she's fallen asleep on him when he hears her softly snore. He finds himself disappointed at this, he assumed she would stay awake longer and discuss things with him; anything. It's been a very lonely ride lately, he needs something to fill the silence in his mind. She doesn't move to say a word in the morning, not when she wakes up and realizes he's no longer there. She shakes her head, she's convinced she dreamt the whole thing to begin with. There's something very surreal about the whole visit to begin with.
But then he comes back the following night, and she understands she couldn't dream these things if she tried.
The first time he kisses her, again, a kiss unlike all the other ones they've exchanged, the ones filled with spitefulness and harshness, they're arguing with heated words. They're arguing, and he's yelling, and she's screaming loud enough for the block to hear, and he leans in to press his mouth firmly against her lips, and she feels the tension in the air dissipate.
(It is the first time he kisses her hard enough for her to feel it everywhere)
He turns to look away from her and she forgets what they were arguing about as she pulls him back to her bed. She doesn't know what to call it, if there's a name for it; it's not found in her vocabulary. It wasn't make-up sex, even though he hasn't touched her since that day she told him she knew about his role with the baby, and it wasn't sex on par with their previous experiences together.
If she didn't know any better, she would have called it gentle, and soft; almost as if they stopped trying to kill each other through the act. It's nice, and it's unlike them and when it's over, she can't help but wonder if they should call it quits right there.
They're friends.
That's what she says when people inquire regarding the status of their relationship together. They always ask, they always want to begin a discussion on the whole story, prying ears that don't belong. She says they're friends, shrugging. What else is she going to say? There's nothing to tell, nothing that's any of their business. The lingering feeling intensifies each time she says they're friends, she doesn't know a point in their relationship where they were ever just friends. (They're not just friends)
"Everyone says you're bad for me." She says one night, whispering to him in the dark of the night. She thinks back to the time, a time before when she was someone who thought the same thing. She doesn't know if her opinion has really changed, she just knows she doesn't want to feel alone.
He rests his head on his hands, using them to prop his head on her pillow. He gives her a cold stare, and she's almost afraid to continue with what she brought up.
"Who's everyone?"
"Everyone."
"Whatever, it's not like I fucking care what they think, anyway."
He turns back away from her, effectively ending any conversation they may have had that night, and she turns to the other side. She's unsurprised by this, he hates discussing things and he hates people. The majority of the school still hasn't forgiven him for his actions in the drama of Babygate, and she can't help but question the situation sometimes.
(Would he still be here if they did?)
"I'm not that type of guy, you know." He adds later that night, the first of many baby steps they will take together.
"What guy is that?" She turns to look at him, surprised that he's willing to continue what she began. She's effectively learned by now he doesn't believe in methods of communication, of talking and speech. He communicates through body language, the way he defends her against any slushie attacks or the glares he gives the Glee kids when they're become resentful of her again.
He sighs heavily, a twinge of exasperation in his voice when he speaks.
"That guy, you know. The one with words and flowers and fucking romance. I'm just not going to be that guy, if that's what you're waiting for."
She laughs, and he's clearly not amused because he's staring at her like she's developed another head.
"We had sex in a janitor's closet for my first time, and most days I was convinced I hated you. You come and go as easily as you please, and I put up with that shit because there's no one else, not for either of us. Quite frankly, I'm not even sure we like each other. I think it's a little too late for you to be that guy."
He buries his head in her neck, and his arms envelope her, the comfort she's grown accustomed to.
"I just wanted to make sure we're on the same page."
They never discuss like, much less love. It's an unspoken rule between the two of them. Don't talk about love. Don't talk about feelings. Don't say declarations. Don't indulge in silly romantic notions. Don't go there. They, the way they've found themselves fused together, have a relationship built on anything but love.
Still, there's the corner of her mind, away from her dreams and aspirations, there's a corner in her mind built just for him. She thinks if she's ever loved anyone, if she ever had the chance to love someone, it would be him. She could love him, actually, despite the current of hostility that always rides along when they're together. She wants to laugh at this; she wants to laugh at loving someone who she knows is only going to end up hurting her in the end but she can't bring herself to stop. She questions if it's possible to love someone she doesn't get along with every day, if ever, but it's the times the questions grow silent when she sees him look at her. He looks at her in peculiar ways, his green eyes glimmering with her reflection. Science and math, she knows them like the back of her hand, but he touches her, and she develops feelings she cannot reveal. His thumb circles the inner corner of her wrist, and he stares at her, and she wonders if there is a word for this.
(If he was ever, ever god forbid truly love someone, it would be her and not because he doesn't have to bother with declarations, and other stupid shit like that; it's because she sees him for the mess he is and she still doesn't leave. Or he doesn't leave. Whatever)
"We're a pretty fucked up pair." He says quietly, his throat constricting, breaking the soft silence they found themselves in. She turns to look at him, observing the crinkling underneath his eyes; the tugging of a slow smile. She takes his face into her palms, and leans further into him, further and further enough to absorb herself into his skin. She rests her forehead on his, and she doesn't say a word. She doesn't have to because she knows.