Puck's always been a badass, but never in the ways that really count.
He's been known to smoke a bowl till the sun comes up, but ever since his dad skipped town, he's tucked his mom into bed every time she's fallen asleep on the couch or kitchen table after coming home from double shifts. He's failed half his classes but hasn't missed a single one of his sister's dance recitals. He's slept with the moms of half his graduating class but still sets aside money from his pool cleaning jobs for a kid he'll never be able to call his own.
Rachel Berry always saw right through that; she saw right through to him.
"Names are important, Noah," she'd told him. "They define who we are and we have them for a reason. I'd like to call you by yours because it matters."
He stopped trying to argue against her then, because she told him he mattered and it stopped him cold because when was the last time someone had told him that?
And for Rachel Berry, of all people to say it- despite how often it was her face at the receiving end of his slushies or that it was his posse who'd mocked and laughed at her in the hallway.
She changed him, just by something as simple as expecting something, something more. Made him a better guy because suddenly, he wanted to be one. It's the reason why he's come to this hospital floor more times than he can count, more times than he'd like to count.
The lights are dim in Rachel's room. Her dad is sitting in a chair in the corner, pretending to read a magazine, but Puck can tell he's just rereading lines the importance and relevance of which have long-since dissolved. Her other father sits next to Rachel on the the bed, laughing contentedly with her at a Youtube clip. The computer light illuminates their faces, rivaling the ghostly pallor that's lingered on Rachel's for the past few weeks. She'd gotten worse with a compromised immune system, admitted as an inpatient by something as simple and commonplace as the flu. The same drugs saving Rachel's life are slowly killing her; it's just a matter of whether the cancer can get there first.
He plasters a smile on his face and knocks lightly to announce his presence, jacket slung over one shoulder. Rachel looks up and beams. If there's one thing that hasn't changed, it's her smile. Perhaps a little more taut around the edges, but it's still just as brilliant as always. He aches, seeing her there, so small - like a broken sparrow- swallowed up by the wide expanse of the bed. But when that smile shines, his own reaches his eyes and becomes a little more sincere.
She's infectious.
Leroy smiles knowingly, kisses Rachel on the forehead and gets up from the bed, patting Puck's shoulder as he passes. Rachel pats invitingly at the space next to her. Puck leans down to gather her in a hug and tries to ignore how half of her chest doesn't really touch his anymore. It feels lopsided, like everything else in this shitty situation, and puts a lump in his throat.
She feels so damn delicate, like she could fucking break at any moment. He's afraid to hug her tightly because jesus, she could crumble in his arms. He releases her awkwardly but she tugs him closer before letting go.
"What, did you think I was gonna let you get away with that?" She teases with a grin.
He bats at her shoulder with a smile. He should have known better than to treat her like some sort of delicate thing. She's always been tough.
She bites her lip and looks up at him with a request in her eyes. It doesn't even matter what it is, because he knows before she asks that he'll say yes.
Which is how he comes to be roaming the halls looking for Quinn instead of squished next to Rachel on a hospital bed watching cute kitten videos. (He was actually more pumped about that than he should care to admit.)
After searching the hallway and nurses' station, he went down to try the cafeteria. While it was a no-go for Q, he did grab a Snickers bar before leaving, winking at the nurse behind him buying a salad. It happened almost subconsciously out of habit, but more than that, he just needed to feel anchored for a moment. This place unnerved him and what it was doing to Rachel unravelled him.
He had been goofing off when it happened, making lewd faces at Santana while she rolled her eyes and flipped him off. He missed Rachel's shaky request to sing a song and the way she kept clasping her fingers together like she was nervous to sing or something (which should have tipped him off more than anything else). But when the music started and the piano sounded like an elegy, Puck never paid closer attention to anything in his life.
It brought him back to the beginning. He got her, that day on the bleachers, before they really even knew each other. (Before he really even knew himself.) He knew what she thought she wanted but didn't really understand at all. The important things snuck up on you: like a growing embryo or a friendship that wasn't.
Life happens in small moments. Like when he opened his bedroom door, morning after the party, stopped dead in his tracks and dropped the trash bag he was holding. He froze, having stumbled into eye contact with the one girl who never looked him in the eyes anymore. Dirty cups and bottles piled around his feet but all he could stare at was Quinn, cradling a sleeping Rachel. Their history passed in the silence before she broke away and glanced down, hugging Rachel a bit tighter. When she looked back up at him, there were feelings in her eyes that neither of them knew what to do with. So he simply gave the barest nod and left, closing the door behind him.
That was the start of it. Maybe whatever passed between Quinn and her that night afforded Rachel a measure of solace safe from what she'd been facing. Or maybe Rachel just realized she couldn't do it all herself anymore. Whatever it was, she eased up after that and let him help out. Even if was something as simple as picking magazines for her to read during the long hours when chemicals dripped slowly into her bloodstream.
Puck turns the corner to find Quinn standing by the nursery window.
It feels like he should say it's their window, but the only thing that was ever 'theirs' between them belongs to someone else now. He slips behind her quietly like the last time they were here, and is struck by how totally bizarre this feels. Like two worlds could simultaneously exist in this one spot. Both so familiar and yet…not. Somehow, nothing about Quinn ever is. Not then and not now. It's always treading around land mines with her - one wrong move… you never knew where you stood until it was too late. He was never sure, not even when part of him was growing inside her.
But now, the one thing he sure as shit knows is that she doesn't belong standing here when there's a girl sick with cancer down the hall waiting and worried and missing her.
He's not sure if the anger or sympathy should win out here, so opts for as neutral as he can manage. "What are you doing here?"
She bristles at the question. Whatever, he thinks, like that's new. It still stings, though, that even after all this time it's still her gut reaction. But that thought just brings him back to sympathy and he looks at her again, this time more softly.
"Don't look at me like that," she almost snaps. Almost because there's an edge to her voice that's missing. She just sounds more tired than anything else.
"How would you even know how I'm looking at you," he shoots back.
"Your reflection in the window, dumbass."
Oh. Well, she was always crazy smart, anyways. Like some Sherlock shit or something.
"Seriously, Q."
She bites her lip. "Maternity and oncology wards are usually on the same floor because babies and cancer patients are immuno-supressed."
A few months ago, he wouldn't have known what half those words meant.
He hates that he knows what they mean now and says the only thing that should matter. "She's worried about you. It's been hours."
Quinn stares at the babies through the glass, at the tiny lives just beginning, and suddenly he feels so old.
"Do you know what the shortest prayer in the Old Testament is?"
Puck barely wore a yarmelke for his Bar Mitzvah. The prayer book he got afterwards is sitting under video game boxes, collecting dust in his closet. He knows she isn't expecting him to answer.
"Please, God, please heal her," her voice cracks.
His tongue feels heavy because he never knows what to say. Only what to sing, and usually by then it's too late, anyways. Or backfires. But she's not finished yet. "And do you know what the shortest prayer in the Bible is?"
Quinn places her palm flat on the glass, and her words come out gravelly. "Lord, save me."
She leans her head against the glass, taking a moment to appreciate the coolness against her skin. "Sometimes, I feel like they're the same prayer," she says. It comes out as a whisper but finishes as a flood. He feels her tears before they fall and scoops Quinn to him tightly.
God, all he wants to do is hug this girl forever and squeeze until everything is ok.
Part of him hates what's he's done to Rachel and Quinn in the past, but the bigger part is grateful that he's here being a part of it now. Because it's moments like these, when words don't matter but his arms are strong around Quinn, where he feels like he could be the man Rachel believes in.
The kind of man he's becoming, in all the ways that matter.