Title: Break Me Clean In Two
Author: lucklessforhim
Pairing: Puck/Quinn
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It's all up in the air and we stand still to see what comes back down...
Word Count: About 2500
Disclaimer: I do not own Glee or any of it's characters.
Note: My very first Glee fic! Not beta'd, so please excuse any mistakes (this is also my first time uploading here, and I had some formatting issues). Set sometime after Furt. Title and summary taken from The Fray's song "She Is." Please, read and let me know what you think!
Quinn sits in the quiet dark of Puck's living room, watching over him and hating him and feeling her heart breaking for him, all at once. She replays the moment of panic she felt at seeing his truck haphazardly parked on the side of the highway (still running and with the door open), and suddenly she needs something to drink.
His iPod is docked on the stereo in the corner and she presses play as she walks slowly across this place that was her home once upon a time. She goes with the intention of pouring herself a glass of water, but when she reaches the kitchen and pulls down a glass, the Santana song "Put Your Lights On" begins to play.
She opens the freezer and reaches behind the frozen peas and Lean Cuisines to the hidden spot in the back to where she knows Mrs. Puckerman keeps a bottle of vodka. She downs about a shot and a half in a single swift motion while Everlast sings "Hey now, all you sinners," and she finds a disconcerting amount of comfort in the icy burn in her throat. She looks long and hard at the bottle, contemplating putting it back in its hiding place. In a split second decision, she says "Fuck it," and walks back to the chair next to the couch to continue her midnight vigil, bottle in tow.
Quinn sets the bottle down on the coffee table. While the storm continues to rage on outside the living room window, she walks over to watch the street outside Puck's house. The rain pelts the glass and she just watches, lost in her thoughts and the weight of this situation. She glances over her shoulder at Puck who s sprawled out on his stomach on the couch, and wishes (not for the first time) that her life was simpler.
He stirs about an hour later, when it is officially too late for her to go home. (Not that she ever planned on leaving him.) She s just past sober, sitting loose and languid in the armchair and she watches him as rolls onto his back, groans and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.
He catches sight of Quinn and says, "Hey. You're here," sounding very confused.
"Yes," she says without elaborating. "I am."
"Why?" he asks hesitantly, looking between her and the bottle on the coffee table.
She laughs, and it's a bitter sound that fills him with shame. "Couldn't very well leave you on the side of the road, could I?"
"You drove me home," he assumes, not lightly and not without gratitude. "You and Sam got into a fight?" He tries to make it sound like a question even though it isn't one, not really. He knows there's no way she would be here otherwise.
The murky memories of a few hours ago start to come back to him. Puck can remember her screaming at her boyfriend that she couldn't just leave him there, and could he help her get him into the truck, because she's pretty sure it s going to start raining soon, and she just needs to get him home. Then he has a flash of her face when she was driving him away from his most recent mistake. Her makeup was smeared and running down her face like she had been caught in the rain that hadn't yet started falling.
She shrugs, taking a sip from her glass. "He doesn't get it."
"He barely knows you, Quinn."
Her eyes sting with the truth of the accusation. She started junior year resolved to finally be herself and not give a damn what people thought, but before she knew it she was back in her Cheerios uniform and dating a star football player. Old habits die hard. (Apparently.)
"I barely know me," she whispers back at him in the dark.
He just sighs in response, that same sad sigh filled with longing that she last heard watching Beth sleep in the nursery, and she knows he feels the same way. For all their immense differences, they're the same on one fundamental level They both feel lost.
"I used to think I knew myself, so secure. Now?" She laughs bitterly, thinking back to when she started high school and was dead set to follow in the footsteps of her mother and sister. "I have no fucking clue."
She meets his eyes, and she shivers when she sees the same insecurity reflected there. He assumes she's just cold and slides off the couch to sling a quilt over her shoulders.
He's close to her then. Too close for her to remember her boyfriend, or even think of anything but how good it feels to have the warm comforting weight of his hands against her body again.
So she kisses him. Or maybe he kisses her. It doesn't really matter to them who closed the last few inches, because she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him closer. After a couple of minutes he moves to kiss and nip at her neck, and she thinks (not for the first time) that he must be the only one that understands her.
When he pulls lightly at the neckline of her dress and brushes her cardigan out of the way to kiss her collarbone, Quinn is jolted back to reality with a memory of those same hands tugging on her Cheerios uniform. So she pushes back against him, comes back to her senses a little bit. Kissing him had always been the easy part of their relationship. But he had almost killed himself tonight, and that was serious. As hard as it was, she couldn't just pretend nothing had happened.
"Stop," she says, curling up further into the chair and putting her sweater back into place. "We can't do this. You're drunk and so am I," she admits.
"Fine," he sighs, moving back to the center of the couch.
They sit like that for a few minutes, just watching each other and listening to the iPod cycle through the last playlist he'd been listening to, an endless supply of sad and angry rock.
Finally, he snaps and tells her, "Say something. You clearly want to."
"What do you want me to say?" she snaps bitterly. "Want me to tell you about how I thought my night was going to end with me attaching a program from the Dayton Ballet to the ribbon board in my room? What the hell, Puck?"
"I get it, Q."
"Do you really?" she asks hotly.
"Yeah. I do. I m a fuck-up," he snaps back at her.
"Look, that's not what I said," she sighs.
"Yeah, well, you didn't have to," he responds, not meeting her eyes.
"What am I supposed to say to that? What do you want from me?" she asks wearily.
"I want you to give a damn! he explodes at her," suddenly towering over her.
She stares up at him with tears shining in her eyes. "Oh my G-" she stutters, breathless. She stands up to look him in the eye and says, "If I didn't give a damn, would I have picked your ass up off the side of the road? Would I have made Sam stop when I saw your truck in a ditch? Would I even be here, right now, taking care of you?" she asks, voice rising with each question until she's screaming at him.
He's silent for a moment, and he just watches her, taking in the significance of what she just said. Then he reaches for her and she's being lovingly crushed against his chest.
"I know I give a damn, because my life would be a hell of a lot easier if I didn't," she whispers into his shirt, voice breaking.
He holds her just like that, ever so slightly rocking her, for a few minutes, and he can feel how scared she was by the way she holds onto him, almost like she's afraid he'll slip away. He pulls back and leads her over to the couch while "Paint It Black" plays from the stereo in the corner.
"I'm not going anywhere," he says softly, brushing a few of her tears away.
She's crying in earnest now and she buries her face in her hands. "You don't know that," she sobs. "You've got to get it together, Noah, because I can t handle worrying about you like this," she tells him.
He nods. "It's just hard," he says, missing the feeling of Quinn's hand in his and the weight of a baby in his arms.
"I know," she tells him sincerely, still sniffling. Because she does know. As much as she might try to pretend otherwise, she misses her baby like someone cut a piece of her heart out and, though she didn't think she would, she really misses Puck.
They sit together for a little while, just listening to the rain pound the roof above them, his hand resting on her hip. After the millionth angry and bitter rock song of the night, though, Quinn loses her patience.
"Ugh!" she huffs exasperatedly and marches over to the iPod. "I'm tired of this depressing crap," she tells him with a glare.
Puck smiles and watches her as she fiddles with the stereo, biting slightly at her lip. He knows she sees that the playlist she made is still on there by the way her hand stills over the play button, afraid to relive the time when she was with him almost 24/7. It's filled with stuff he'd never admit to having otherwise, like touchy-feely chicks that play pianos. (She doesn't know how often he plays it. But he plays it a lot.)
She takes the leap, and presses the button with a deep breath. Then the soft sound of Missy Higgins' voice fills the room. "Warm Whispers" just seems to fit the mood, and Quinn wonders how the tiny black box knows.
The half-empty glass hangs low and loose in her grip while she paces the room, eventually settling in front of the window.
"I don't think Sam really wants to be my boyfriend anymore," she says staring into the storm outside.
He feels himself hope for a second and lets his eyes wander to her beautiful, perfect right hand where the promise ring was two days ago. It's gone now, and he knows it's not because it didn't match her outfit.
"Because of me?" he asks hesitantly, just above a whisper.
"No," she smiles sadly. "Because of me."
She turns back to face him, and he can see tear tracks staining her cheeks.
"Hey," he says softly, standing from the couch and walking over to her. "I didn't mean to make you cry." He hates making her cry, and he's done it too many times in the past.
She groans, wiping the tears from her eyes. "You didn't. I just...I can't believe I did this to myself again."
"What do you mean?" he asks as he leads her by the hand back to the couch.
Her heels had been kicked off next to the armchair long ago, and she curls her stocking covered legs under her body. Once she s settled in, she says, "I did this once before, staying with someone I didn't love for the sake of my reputation."
"Finn."
Slowly, sipping from the glass, she nods.
"I thought I would be strong enough to stand on my own now. You know, after...everything."
At the mention of the baby Puck goes still. "You are strong enough, Quinn. You just have to be willing to choose the harder road."
She sits there next to him, swallowing through the tightness in her throat over and over again, willing it to go away.
"Hey, where's your mom?" she asks suddenly, needing to change the subject, turning to crane her neck to stare down the dark hallway.
"Hospital," he says shortly. "My Nana...she had a stroke a couple of days ago."
"Oh my God. Is she okay?" Quinn knew, for all his talk and bad boy image and rep, Puck was really close to his Nana.
"They still don't know."
It was suddenly very clear to Quinn that she wasn't the only thing causing stress in Puck's life. He was worried about school, staying on the straight and narrow, repairing his relationship with his mom, and now, on top of all of that, his Nana. His life was full of stress and as much as he was trying to hold it all together, he just couldn't. And he didn't have anyone to turn to about it. Quinn hopes she can be that person for him.
"I'm sorry, Noah," she whispers, resting her hand comfortingly on his leg.
"Whatever," he says quietly, moving away from her a little.
Quinn sits there in shock for a moment. And then she gets angry.
"What the hell?"
"I could ask you the same thing. I told you because you asked, not to get your pity."
"It's not pity! It's concern. I'm your friend."
"Please," he scoffs bitterly. "Since when are you my friend? You don't even like me."
"Hey." He refuses to look at her. "Hey," she says again, this time nudging his knee with her stocking-covered foot. "Look at me."
She waits for him to meet her eyes, and sincerely says, "I like you."
He looks at her and raises a single disbelieving eyebrow. "Really?" he asks skeptically.
"Really," she confirms, moving to sit closer to him. She looks him in the eye and says, "I like you. You're one of the only people that can always make me smile. And laugh. You're funny, Puck. And you're smart," she adds.
He looks at her like maybe she's never met him, or she's brain damaged or something.
"No really," she says, laughter filling her voice. "Well, when you want to be," she amends with a wink.
They both laugh at that, and she can feel them getting closer and closer to a place where they could trust each other, and be happy together. It feels good, it feels comfortable, it feels right.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The power goes out around 3:30, and Puck knows this is the perfect time for him to insist, like a gentleman, that she get some sleep and thank her for picking his ass up. But she beats him to the punch by reaching into his jacket pocket and lighting the candle on the coffee table with his zippo. Her smile glows warm in the orange light, and Puck thanks the God he's sure exists. Because she's there, smiling at him, and she's staying.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
He'll take her out for pancakes in the morning, at the same diner they went to every Saturday of the last 10 weeks that she lived with him. And when he drops her off at home she'll kiss him goodbye so softly and sweetly, he'll swear it could have been a dream.
But just before he pulls out of her driveway, he'll a text message. "Dinner tonight? XO, Q."
It won't be a dream, and he'll be sure he's never felt happier.
The End.
Well, how did I do?