A/N: I don't own Glee. If I did, I wouldn't be stuck in this horrible snowy mess called upstate NY.
From a prompt at the P/R drabble meme:
"In preschool, a girl actually kissed me on the cheek. I didn't know what to do, I didn't know what it meant so I instantly grabbed her face and kissed her on the lips. And then I got suspended." -Misha Collins
(Prompt was a .gif, found here: http:/community. livejournal. com/ ?thread=11899514#t11899514)
Puck and Rachel had always known each other. Their families had been friends since they were born, pretty much. Rachel used to say that they were friends, maybe best friends, but Puck used to say that she was a girl and she had cooties. So they socialized when their parents put them together every weekend, and didn't talk much aside from that for a few years.
When they got a bit older, Puck changed. A lot. He no longer thought girls were "yucky." On the contrary, he spent most of his time chasing them. In particular, he spent his time chasing Rachel. Everyday during class, he'd flick her shoulder or pull on her braids. For a while, she thought he hated her. She'd run home after school and cry to her fathers while they just shot each other knowing looks over her head.
They were on the playground one day toward the end of recess; Rachel on the monkey bars and Puck on the ground, trying to look up her skirt. He was about to get the perfect view when her fingers slipped, causing her to drop and her bare knees and hands to scrape against the hard gravel. As her cry resounded through the air, he stared down at her, his eyes wide and his mouth agape.
Rachel curled up a bit, clutching her raw hands to her slightly bloodied knees. Puck dropped down by her side, holding the back of her head. "Rach," he breathed out. "Rachel, are you okay?" She shook her head, wincing in pain. When she looked back up, he was gone. He ran off to get their teacher, who fetched the nurse, who in turn, came outside to tend to Rachel's wounds.
Fifteen minutes later, by the time Rachel's cuts had been cleaned out (Puck grimaced as though he was feeling the sting of the antiseptic himself) and bandaged, all the other kids had gone inside and it was just the two of them left with the nurse. While the nurse was replacing her materials into her bag, Rachel gazed up into Puck's eyes.
"Noah, that was very heroic of you." She smiled softly, brushing the back of her skirt as he helped her to her feet with a shrug.
"It was nothin', I know you woulda done the same for me." He smiled back sheepishly.
"Yes, of course I would've. But that doesn't belittle what you did." She leaned up slightly on her toes to press a light kiss to his cheek.
Puck's eyes snapped open, his head turning quickly to look at her as she pulled away and glanced down, a tinge of pink on her cheeks. He quickly reached up to cup her face in his hands before lowering his lips against hers, a bit rougher than was probably acceptable for a first kiss and even less acceptable for a kiss between six year olds.
When he pulled back and took in Rachel's shocked expression, he smirked to himself. But when the nurse gasped, shouting out in anger, his face quickly fell. And when she sent them both to the principal, who pronounced them both suspended for one day, he tried not to think of how pissed his mom would be and instead he felt pretty proud again.
So yeah, if you ask Noah Puckerman when he became a badass, he'll tell you, "When I got goody-goody Rachel Berry suspended for kissing on the playground."
