Summary: And once more, the sidekick leaves alone while the hero leaves with the wrong girl. His girl.
Prologue: Pink Lemonade
It's Saturday before noon, he doesn't usually roll out of bed earlier than two but he makes exceptions where she's concerned. Especially when her parents are out of town and her boyfriend is too busy taking care of his post-surgery mother to show up. He takes his shirt off and asks her for something to drink.
She flips through her texts and mumbles, "There's lemonade in the fridge."
He rolls his eyes and lets himself in. Her house is nicer than most in Lima, but it isn't fancy, and there's creepy Jesus paintings and statuettes all over the place that make him feel like he's being judged for being goddamn thirsty. He walks over to the fridge and stares at it. There are pictures of Quinn coating every available inch of it with little magnet frames proclaiming things like You're a star and Our little angel.
He bites his lip as his eyes gloss over one of her and Finn at homecoming last year. Her in a short, sparkly red dress exactly their school's color and him looking at something off camera. He hides his friend's face behind one of her and her father at her first communion and keeps looking. There are pictures of her with grandparents and friends, with her new car, on birthdays, sitting on the couch and reading. One catches his eye up in the corner, her asleep with her pom-poms in her lap. Her head leaning against the arm of the recliner in her living room, all curled up with an angelic smile on her face. He doesn't know why but he takes it and puts it in his pocket. There are a hundred more where that came from, no-one will miss it.
With that he opens the fridge and sees the pitcher of ice-cold lemonade she told him about. Except it's pink lemonade, and he doesn't like it. So instead, he takes one of the fruity little wine coolers that her mother always buys but never drinks and heads back out to the yard to start cleaning her hot tub.
The second he's out the door he hears, "What are you doing?" In that disapproving voice she uses when he makes "motions that make the angels cry" at Celibacy Club.
"What do I look like I'm doing?" He might like that she's still staring at him because he takes a nice long swig of it and then lets out a refreshed, "Aaahhh," before smirking at her.
She moves to take it away from him, "I told you could have lemonade, moron. Not alcohol, which is for people over 21."
He holds it over her head and grins, "I don't like pink lemonade."
"I don't either but that doesn't make you 21," She snaps, jumping to try to steal it. It fails and she stumbles.
"No, it makes me someone under-aged who actually has balls," He raises an eyebrow and she scowls.
"Girls aren't supposed to have balls, Noah," She hisses, narrowing her eyes at him. "Now go fill what you took with water and put it back."
He takes another sip like she didn't just use his birth name, his dad's name, and smiles at her, "I'm sorry, I don't talk to chickens."
She looks down at herself, in her weekend clothes, a red-beater and a black skirt, and then back up at him. "Do I look chicken?"
"Actually you look like you put on a few," She doesn't, he knows that but she wants more attention from him when she's insecure.
"Loser," She snaps, snatching his bottle from him. He groans, now she's going to go back inside and dump it into the sink.
She glares at him and tosses her head back, she presses the bottle to her lips and swallows the rest slowly but surely before looking back up at him, "Happy?" She sighs, shoving the bottle into her hands and walking towards the house. "Now I'm going to be fat and drunk."
"You aren't really fat," He says, because he really didn't expect her to be so low on self-esteem that she'd actually drink. He didn't expect her to actually drink period. "Maybe a little uptight…"
"How am I uptight?" She demands, her back going stiff and her face falling flat. "I just drank that didn't I?"
"Because I called you fat," He taunts, grinning.
"That doesn't make me uptight," She bites, putting a hand on one hip.
"No, what makes you uptight is that your head cheerleader dating the football captain and heading up the Celibacy Club," He tells her smugly and he watches the frown lines in her forehead grow, making it all the more fun. "You quote the bible, you wear your cheerleading uniform every Monday through Friday and still wear your school colors on the weekend."
"So?" She asks, but he can hear the lack of conviction in her voice that means he's already successfully offended there. Mean he's winning.
"So?" He mocks, and grins again, "You drive a punch buggy."
"You drive an El Camino," She shoots back. "It's a car for criminals." She storms into the house.
He sighs, watching her go. Somehow this always seems to be the way things end up between the two of them, he offers to do something nice for her and then screws it up with that nagging need for attention. So her turns back to the tub and looks at the water, really all he needs to do is put a vial of chlorine in and then scoop the leaves out. He opens up the tool kit that he brought for show and pulls it out, poising it above for a second.
"Puck," He hears from behind him and looks up to see her standing there in her swim suit, another cooler in her hand. "I changed my mind, you can clean it later."
"Oh," He puts the vial back in the box and closes it quickly, wondering how she possibly could have changed in less than a minute. "I'll, uh…" He picks up the box and moves to leave.
"Wait," She steps in front of him so quickly he walks into her, feeling her chest up against his with nothing separating them but that tiny little red bathing suit.
He tries to think of non-sexy things…The locker room, foot fungus, Rachel Berry. None of them work. He sees her walking through the locker room in a towel after cheerleading practice, all nice and wet from a shower. Her scoffing at Finn who has developed athlete's foot and winking at him. Her mud-wrestling with Rachel Berry.
"You could…um…" She takes at step back, "Stay. I'm kind of bored, Finn's mom had surgery."
"Yeah," He nods, "On her prostate."
She looks at him like he's an idiot, "Girls don't have prostates."
He's torn between going to beat the hell out of his best friend for lying to him or getting in that hot tub with his very hot, semi-naked girlfriend. He chooses option B. "Sorry, must have misheard," She rolls her eyes and simmers over towards the tub.
"Are you getting in or not?" She spits at him, leaning a long toned leg over the side.
"Yes, princess, can you please at least act like you have patience," He retorts, pulling off his shorts to reveal a pair of black boxers.
"You can at least act like you have brain cells," She smiles at him, leaning her blond ponytail into the water. When she comes back up she's still grinning, her pink lips all wet and her green eyes sparkling evilly. He can't help leaning in, and he definitely can't help it that she doesn't move away. He wouldn't if he could.
And as they seeming to dissolve into the heated water together his last coherent thought is that it's ironic that he came over to clean the hot tub when what they're doing is so dirty.
AN: So yep, I'm doing a full length Puck-Quinn story now. I love them. And since it seems like the writers are more focused on the whole Rachel/Finn/Quinn triangle, I'll create my own moments, even if they are stolen.
