Until We Say I Do
Prologue
by Leila Winters
Rachel Berry was a romantic at heart.
She'd spent her entire childhood, her teenage years, and the early part of her adult life envisioning love as being swept off your feet and walking on clouds of cotton candy.
She knew now it was more like swimming in a river. Sometimes you went with the flow, sometimes you swam upstream, sometimes you were in over your head, sometimes the surface froze over while the current still rushed by in a blur underneath, sometimes it went too fast or at a slow crawl, and sometimes it grew tumultuous with churning waters that crashed dangerously against deadly rocks.
She decided she rather liked that extended metaphor and would find ways to incorporate a lazy dock, leeches, and free-falling off an unfathomable drop into the lovely, poetic discourse of her love.
She was a thoroughly modern woman, she told herself. She was take-charge in her relationships and was her partner's equal in most matters (she was well aware she would never be able to bench press 250 lbs or down four beers in a night without throwing up, but would he ever be able to name 50 musicals in alphabetical order with their composers and lyricists in under three minutes? Let's not get delusional here).
So the reason she found herself dropping hints that she wanted to get married instead of just talking about it frustrated her. Couldn't a thoroughly modern woman just want her man to be filled with UNCONTAINED INFATUATION and propose in a thoroughly romantic fashion to the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with?
She thought so. And she was going to make it happen.
-.-
Here's the thing:
Noah Puckerman does what he wants to do. It's not that he doesn't want to spend the next sixty years kissing that funny nose of hers. Or fall asleep listening to her incessant yammering. Or eat the delicious pastries she bakes when her spirits are soaring on the wings of good fortune (her words, not his). Or get deep-throated when he's been an especially good boy.
(No, really. That last one is awesome and he even says a little modeh ani prayer the next morning as a way to give back to the good lord who blessed his girlfriend with no gag reflex. Which actually might be sacrilegious, but the way he figures it, god made sex awesome and made him awesome at it and made them mind-blowingly awesome together, so it's not a crime to be thankful for being able to use what the good lord gave you, right?)
What he doesn't like is having to be told in so many ways to propose, when if he did, it would look like it wasn't his idea in the first place.
So she just keeps orchestrating elaborate propose-to-me scenarios and he just keeps pretending he doesn't know it's what she really wants.
NOTES: This is a drabble crack fic. I really shouldn't be taking on new writing projects considering I'm behind on my Gleephoria blog...but I have to go where my creative energies take me.
In my perfect world, there are three different parallel universes and Rachel Berry is happily tucked away in Puckleberry, St. Berry, and OtherBerry (Mike Chang! XD) ships in each one. The fourth universe, she gets to be trapped in gigantic, confusing polygons of love. The dimension this fic takes place in happens to be starring Puck. I'm not actually sure he's happy about that.
Disclaimer: If I owned anything resembling rights to Glee, I'd find some way to ruin it. Let the chaos begin.
Timeline jumps, but should all take place within the same year or so.