Title: Good/It Killed Him

Disclaimer:We the serialhugger collective do not own GLEE or any of the trademarks, licenses, or characters related thereof.

Summary: Sometimes Rachel kills Puck.

Author: Smurf

Notes:Requestfic for Janey.

Rating:T should be K+ really, but there's some swearing, so it got bumped up as per Janey's insistence.

Good/It Killed Him

It killed him that she still, after all these years, refused to defend herself. Or maybe, it was just that she'd never learned how, because she was incapable of understanding why or how a person could come up with vicious lies and torment another human being, who had never done them harm. She was too innocent for that- too good. She could be manipulative and sneaky like everyone else when it suited, but she never did it out of malice- jealousy, maybe insecurity, but never out of spite.

It killed him that she never ran. She knew it was coming- the mid-morning slushy attacks, the rumours, the name-calling and the snide comments- but she didn't even try to get away. She didn't cry about it, not ever... and that just made it worse, because while she didn't cry in public, he was sure she did in private. He hated it when women cried.

It killed him that she didn't laugh anymore- not really. Every day she plastered a megawatt smile on her face and played it off like her life was fine. Everything was okay, because, really, this was high school and high school- aside from GPA's and extracurriculars to flesh out college applications with- did not matter. She was going somewhere and she knew it; she had goals and ambitions and if the rest of the student body found her single-minded determinedness too much to handle, then that was their issue, not hers. Still, the smile was fake.

It killed him that she would smile with meaning at the boy who had replaced her as his best friend; however, she couldn't seem to look at him with anything but a mask of neutrality. She could look at his best friend, ooze adoration, and in the next instant look at him with callously little emotion. He wondered when she had forgotten that they had been best friends, before high school, before middle school... before hormones and popularity and other stupid fucking social conventions like cliques and keeping the status quo, had built up walls between them. On the other hand, maybe she hadn't… he wasn't sure if that was worse or better.

It killed him that the Santana's and Quinn's and, hell, even the him's of this world were always going to find a way to hurt her- to humiliate and shame her without really having a reason. The strong preyed upon the weak. They were the strong- at least in the setting of high school and the trappings that went with it-, they were the beautiful people and she didn't fit into their perfect world of football games and after parties. She had her own likes and dislikes and she wasn't afraid to do what it was that she loved. She was different, so she was ridiculed.

It killed him that she had seen through him. She had figured it out, that she was, once again, second best. She had broken up with him then, because it wasn't fair to him, or to her, that they should carry on with the farce. He didn't doubt she'd been happy with him, he'd seen her smile at him, real smiles, like the ones she gave Finn or the original gleeks. He'd felt it too, when he'd kiss her. Nobody could kiss like that if they didn't feel something for the person on the receiving end; he knew from experience. She had liked him. She liked his family too, his mother and his sister. She had smiled when his mother talked to her; she had answered all of his little sister's questions and even promised to play Barbie dolls with her after Temple sometime. She had even offered to be his friend after she had ended their spoof of a real relationship. She was just... good like that.

It killed him that he wasn't good like that- he was awesome, but he wasn't good the way she was and it killed him that, for her, he couldn't be the way that he was before... Before he'd become popular, before he'd replaced her with Finn, before he'd started sleeping with Lima's cougar population, before he'd screwed everyone over in one night of drunken stupidity... and before Noah Puckerman had become Puck.

Mostly it killed him that when he told her, "We weren't friends before this", she didn't argue. He guessed that was his fault, he had spent years making sure that nobody would connect him to McKinley High's resident drama queen after all. It was comforting, though, she hadn't taken back the offer, even after the truth came out and all hell broke loose. Rachel was just good like that. She was freaky, short, high-strung, a diva, talked like she'd swallowed a dictionary and the thesaurus that came with it, and totally batshit-fucking crazy, but she was still good… And yeah, okay, he could admit it; she was talented, driven, Jewish (his mother had loved that about her), hot as hell in those tiny, little skirts and knee socks she paraded around in and she called him Noah, even though deep down she had to know it killed him.

Hugs and Oreos
Smurf

Hope you enjoyed this Janey.