Title: Nobody Answers (When I Call Your Name)
Category: Glee
Genre: Angst/Tragedy
Ship: Puck/Rachel
Rating: Teen
Warning(s): Character Death
Prompt: Months after his wife's death Puck realizes that he still drives with his hand in a holding hers position. by xxxalexandraxxx – puckrachel drabble meme.
Word Count: 1,828
Summary: Coping. What a stupid word. What a stupid thing to say or do or be. But that's what he is now. That's all he is now.
Nobody Answers (When I Call Your Name)
-1/1-
Coping. What a stupid word. What a stupid thing to say or do or be.
But that's what he is now. That's all he is now.
Noah Puckerman is coping.
Coping with day to day life.
With loss.
With grief.
With that empty space next to him that used to be filled.
Filled with joy.
With laughter.
With love.
Filled to the point of being stuffed.
To overcapacity.
To surrounded and imbedded and drowned in her.
In his wife.
His love of his life.
His dream.
His inspiration.
His reason.
His Rachel.
And now that's gone.
Now that's was and formerly and past.
She is was and formerly and past.
Passed, actually.
Died.
Dead.
Gone.
It doesn't matter that she still had smiles left to share.
Songs to sing.
Hugs to spread.
Love to give.
It doesn't matter that he needs her and misses her and wishes, every day, that she still be right there next to him. Filling up space.
Holding his hand.
Humming to herself.
Baking sugar cookies.
Scolding him.
Listing all the reasons red-meat is wrong.
Sneaking tofu into his food.
Rolling her eyes.
Complaining.
Berating the actress that won the roll she wanted
Listing all the ways that actress is not as talented as she is.
Crying into a bottle of wine over why she is more talented than her.
Boasting when she gets a roll.
Practicing.
Singing scales at five in the morning.
Singing scales at five at night.
Singing scales in her sleep.
Reading scripts.
Re-reading scripts.
Re-re-reading scripts.
Making him act out the other roles for her.
Blowing the crowd away with her voice.
Crying over the reviews and the flowers and the praise.
Dusting her Tony's.
Repeat.
Fighting with him.
Yelling at him.
Pouting.
Apologizing.
Make-up sex.
Cuddling with him.
Kissing him.
Everywhere.
All the time.
Sighing.
Whining.
Laughing.
Breathing.
He misses that a lot.
The sound of her breathing next to him.
The sound of her snoring.
Of the hitch in her breath when he kisses that spot on her neck.
The warmth of her breath on his neck as she sleeps next to him, turned into him, face pressed into his shoulder.
There's so much he misses that he can't list it all.
Can't begin to remember all of it until it's gone and he can't have it and he wants it.
He wants it all back and her back and he knows…
He knows that he couldn't stop what happened.
He can't change any of it.
The thing is, he feels guilty for missing her. Because he knows he got more time than he ever expected.
He got more of her than he ever thought he could or would.
Once upon a time, he was a boy who wasn't good enough for her. So he tried and he tried…
To get over her.
To love someone else.
To be worthy.
And one day he was.
Or she thought he was.
They were in New York and she was reaching for her dreams and he was playing music and going to college and working his ass off to show her that he wasn't just leading man material, he was husband material.
He was the guy she should have 'bad ass kids with killer voices' with.
The guy who held her when she lost another role.
Who made her tea when her throat hurt from singing.
Who believed in her, every day; every good or bad audition.
Who had to duck to fit into their first apartment.
Who pawned his guitar when they couldn't make rent.
Who baked her birthday cupcakes that tasted like plaster dust.
Who told her he loved her, every day.
Who did love her, every day, since he was seventeen.
Since before New York.
Before she even realized he was there and ready and waiting.
And for eleven years, he proved that.
Until one day he had nobody to prove it to.
Nobody to wake up to.
Nobody to laugh with.
Nobody to beg to stop singing so damn early in the morning.
Nobody to hold or kiss or love.
Nobody and nothing.
It was a freak accident.
One second she was there and the next she wasn't.
It was raining. He offered to pick her up but she'd already called a cab. So he started dinner and he put the game on even though he knew she'd want to watch one of her soapy-drama's instead.
And then the game ended and her dinner was getting cold and he was worried.
He was really fucking worried.
Because Rachel Barbra Puckerman (Berry on stage) was never late.
She was early.
For everything.
Always.
And then a cop knocked at the door and he was telling Puck how sorry he was; that she wouldn't be coming home.
Not ever.
The cab hydroplaned into oncoming traffic. She died instantly.
She didn't suffer.
And he was just there. He was alive and alone and still waiting.
He was always waiting.
They call it coping.
He gets up, every day, and he goes to work.
He plays his music and he fills the bar and he sings and picks away at the strings of his guitar.
On auto-pilot, he survives.
He goes home to his empty apartment with its beautiful view.
The one she bounced on her tip-toes in and cried, "Yay!" when they realized they could have it.
He makes dinner in the kitchen where she designated places for him to make his 'disgusting red meat' and she could put together her vegan meals.
And he never touches her counter; he never gets rid of all her healthy shit.
When he grocery shops, he still picks up the things she likes.
He sits at the table and he eats in silence and he stares at where she should be and where she's not…
At breakfast, while he eats Lucky Charms and waits for her to complain about the sugar content.
At lunch, waiting for her to tell him some poor turkey had to die for his sandwich.
At dinner, waiting for her to thank him for making that vegan stir fry she likes and wrinkles her nose at whatever dead animal he fried up for himself.
Months go by and he's still waiting.
His friends ask how he is, his mother calls and worries and offers to visit, and he tells them he's fine.
He tells them he's coping.
And his sister asks, "Have you cried?"
He doesn't answer.
'Cause it hurts to say no.
It feels wrong to say no.
But he hasn't.
He doesn't.
He lays in their bed, always on his side, his hand where her body should be, and he's empty.
He's hollow.
He's broken.
But he tells his sister he's coping and she accepts that.
She accepts that he's grieving.
He's surviving.
He's moving on.
And for awhile, he even convinces himself.
He tells himself he's okay.
He'll be okay.
And then, one day he's driving.
In the car they'd picked out together; the one she made him pay extra for heated seats in.
The one that she played every Broadway song ever sung, loudly, in.
The one where the passenger seat is still pushed forward because she was so damn short and didn't need the leg room.
And at a red light, the radio buzzing faintly in the background, he looks down and he sees that his hand…
Forearm braced in the middle, he has his hand out and cupped, his fingers spread, waiting…
He's waiting for her to take his hand.
To hold it.
To brush her thumb against his like she always has.
To squeeze and stroke and play with.
To challenge him to a thumb war.
To compare how large his hands is to how tiny hers is, like she hasn't been holding it since she was nineteen.
A hand just like his other one that still wears a gold wedding band.
That she took in hers and held tightly as she vowed to be his wife.
As she promised to love and be loved by him for the rest of her life.
And all he can do is stare.
Stare at this empty space where her hand should be.
But isn't.
Will never be.
And he doesn't hear the horns honking or the people calling him names for holding them up.
He doesn't see that the light has changed to green and yellow and red again.
All he sees is his empty, lonely, singular hand.
The tears that haven't been there for three months…
That weren't there when the cop told him she was gone.
Weren't there when he identified her body.
Or buried her.
Or sat Shiva with her fathers.
Not every night that he went home to find it eerily silent.
Every morning he woke up in an empty bed, the quiet echoing all around.
Every single tear after ninety days of not having her comes burning from his eyes with no end in sight.
His head drops, body folding it on itself, and the grief living inside him comes out in a shattered, moaning, wail…
His hand curls into a fist, fingers pressing painfully into his palm.
He sobs and yells and curses.
He punches and shakes the steering wheel and his body vibrates from head to toe against the intense waves of loss that drown him; that suffocate him so deeply he can't breathe.
He can't draw a whole breath, but instead a bunch of shuddering, desperate huffs of air that don't help. Instead, they burn in his chest; like a fire spreading out from his lungs and igniting his skin.
It goes on for seconds or minutes or maybe even hours.
Traffic moves on around him, circling his car and giving a pissed honk in his direction.
They don't care.
They don't know.
They don't see this man finally falling apart over what he's lost.
What he will never have again.
What he tried so hard to have and to be worthy of.
What he put his whole life into.
Until finally that man is not crying.
He is not begging for God to give him a miracle.
To bring her back.
To take him instead.
He's not reaching out to the woman who no longer sits there next to him.
He's just idling.
Blinking.
A few silent tears still dripping down his face, catching on his lip before dangling off the edge and slithering down to his chin.
Blankly, hollowly, Noah grips the steering wheel and he stares at his wedding ring.
He stares at the shiny gold band that had once promised him he would always have her.
Slowly, his eyes rise to center on the traffic light, brows furrowed.
And when it turns a bright, blaring, violent shade of red, he presses his foot down onto the accelerator and he closes his eyes.
Coping. What a stupid word. What a stupid thing to say or do or be…
So he doesn't.
[End.]
Author's Note: For any of you hoping for an uplifting ending, I do apologize. Recently, my grandfather died and while I definitely hope my grandmother doesn't follow in Puck's footsteps, I felt this was cathartic and I can't say I'd change how I ended it for anything. Still, I know you might have been hoping for something more along the lines of the human spirit triumphing over grief... I just don't have it in me at the moment. Thank you all for reading though! Hopefully, my next update will be less depressing! ^_^