Basic Disclaimer:
1. I don't own Glee.
Notes: This prompt was too gorgeous to pass up. Also, it is 3:11 a.m. and I've just finished writing it. It's un-beta'd so forgive any mistakes. I'll edit again when I wake up. The link to the prompt is now fixed.
Warnings: Mentions of sexy times. Fluff.
Spoilers: None.
All Of A Sudden It's Her Favourite
She hasn't been home in three years. Ever since she left for New York two weeks after graduating from McKinley, she has made a conscious effort to avoid her tiny two-bit hometown. She doesn't regret a minute of it because spending every holiday away meant summers in Prague, spring breaks in the Caribbean and Hanukkahs around Europe. But it also meant that the home she grew up in became unfamiliar territory. Her fathers' haven't changed the place much but they have this tendency to rotate the pictures on display every few months. She had no idea what they have scattered about the house now.
Rachel has just stepped into the study in search of her cardigan from the night before when she catches sight of the wall. It's always been covered in pictures of her and she sees a few perpetual favourites in their regular places. A few new ones have appeared amongst them. There's one from graduation day, another is the first picture she sent her fathers after they left her in her dorm, there's one from their family trip to Budapest last August and one of her on a beach in India. There are some she hasn't seen since before she left too. There's one of her winning her first middle school science fair, one of her at her first "big girl" dance recital, one of her in a red tutu with an award bigger than she was. Then there's one that stops her in her tracks.
She can't remember ever seeing it before. She's just a little girl in the picture, probably no older than six, but she doesn't look the way she usually does in pictures. She's not posing, she isn't even smiling; she's just sitting there, flat on the ground, in a pretty little floral-printed dress, glancing at the camera. Her hair is loose and she's clean and she's not smiling but she looks...happy. Content in the way only a child can be.
Rachel thinks she knows why: she's not alone in the photograph. There's a terribly familiar little boy sitting beside her.
His feet are bare and he's wearing the most ridiculous yet totally adorable hat she has ever seen in her life. He's clean though. His t-shirt is a pristine white despite the dusty trousers. His eyes are darker than she knows them to truly be and a few stray locks of dark hair peek out from beneath the woven material covering his head. In his hands he holds a child-sized guitar, fingers poised mid-strum. He, unlike her, does not look content. In fact, he looks distinctly disappointed—or perhaps he's irritated, Rachel can't really tell—that little Rachel is no longer paying attention to him and his guitar.
It's a little heartbreaking, to be honest.
Without thought her hand rises and she reaches out a finger to run along the image of boy's cheek. This was so very long ago. She honestly has no recollection of the day the photograph was taken but it reminds her of every other time this boy and his guitar captivated her.
She stares hard and sees the tiny frown half formed behind his dark curls. She almost chuckles. Instead, she breathes his name out in a quiet, nostalgic sigh.
She definitely doesn't expect him to answer her.
His voice—not the little boy's but the man's rich, deep intonation—startles her. She spins on the ball of her foot to face him. Looking at him now it's hard to believe that this beautifully crafted man was once the same chubby-cheeked, innocent little musician in the picture. Now he is all sculpted muscles and perfectly defined bone structure. He is gorgeous and maybe that's what binds him to the little boy in the photo. They are both beautiful.
Noah Puckerman stands at the door to her fathers' study in dark slacks and a crisp white button down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. In one hand he holds a coffee cup she knows she sent to her Daddy after her visit to Japan. In the other hand he has at least three manila folders almost bursting with legal documents. She doesn't understand what she's looking at anymore.
She can't comprehend his presence in Lima much less his presence in her childhood home.
"Welcome home," he says finally.
Rachel nods, still feeling the frown creasing her forehead, and locates her manners. "Thank you, Noah."
And the silence is awkward.
He turns away from her and heads towards the filing cabinets lining the wall to her right. She keeps staring at him as he moves comfortably among her fathers' things. He tucks two of the three files he brought with him into a drawer, takes four out of the drawer beneath that, glances through each before replacing one then turns to the bookcase behind him. He has one hand skimming along the spines of various binders when he speaks again.
"You can ask, you know."
"Ask what?"
He settles on a red binder and pulls it off a shelf too high for Rachel to reach to this day. He turns to face her with a pleasingly familiar smirk on his lips. "What the fuck I'm doing in your house, for one thing."
His vulgarity makes her chuckle quietly. "Alright Noah, what the fuck are you doing in my house?"
The hitch of his eyebrow and turn of his lips tell her that she has suitably impressed him with her newfound ability to speak the profane. She feels ludicrously proud of herself for that. Then he says, "I'm interning at your Dads' firm this summer."
"I thought you were in Texas," she says. "Why would you leave UT?"
"I didn't," he replies simply.
He flips past a few pages of the binder that's open in front of him. Rachel watches him and is surprised, downright surprised, at how natural it looks for him to be there, doing that. Puck was never to be associated with books but this version of Noah looks completely at ease buried up to his elbows in files. Rachel is accustomed to carrying on conversations with the tops of lawyers' heads so it's not strange to talk to Noah while he is distracted by case files.
What is strange is how badly Rachel wishes he would look at her again.
Three years is a long time to not see someone who's been a part of your life forever.
"My mother," he grimaces as he says it and Rachel can't help but smile at the irritated fondness of his tone, "insisted I come back to Lima for summer this year. When I told her it meant giving up an internship I'd already won, she made some calls. Turns out your dads like me enough to let me work for them."
"My fathers have always liked you, Noah. You know this."
He glances up and grins at her. And suddenly she has control of her body back. She slinks towards him because, Good Lord, have you seen Noah Puckerman lately?
This can't be coincidence; she's certain. And this—the two of them being dragged home for the summer simultaneously—screams of parental conspiracy.
She stops when she's directly in front of him and reaches out a hand. Whatever he's looking at snaps shut with a flick of her wrist. He looks at her and she arches an eyebrow at him in challenge. He shakes his head but he's smiling.
"Coffee?" he asks.
It turns out that 'coffee' with Noah means spending all day in a darkened corner of Lima's local Starbucks talking about the three years they didn't see each other. Eventually he has to drive her home and he really means to just walk her to her front door but her driveway is empty and she's fucking gorgeous in the dim mix of dusk and streetlight so he kisses her all the way up to her bedroom.
They keep kissing all summer.
In late August, she's curled up in the armchair in the corner of the study while Noah is at the desk with deposition notes all around him. She glances up at him then her eye catches on the picture from the very beginning. When she asks him what he thinks he was thinking then, he tells her, "Probably some variation of what I'd been thinking all my life."
She tilts her head to the side and asks, "What's that?"
He puts the pen he's holding down. When he looks at her, her breath catches. His whole expression is so open she's afraid of what he's going to say because summer is ending soon. If he tells her something life changing, it's still going to have to wait a year, at least, because she's graduating from Julliard next June come what may.
It doesn't stop her from desperately wanting to hear what he has to say.
"Look at me, damn it."
She's in his lap in seconds. They make love right there on the desk.
He says 'I love you' a week before she's supposed to head back to New York. She knows he doesn't mean to, it just slips out. She gives him ample opportunity to take it back. He kisses her to shut her up and whispers it again when he's inside of her.
She says it just before she orgasms. Then, she says it when she can breathe evenly again.
So they're in love.
A year apart isn't easy but they go back to Lima for Thanksgiving. She flies to Austin a few days before Hanukkah and they fly to Lima together to celebrate with their families. He surprises her by showing up in New York for the Valentine's Day weekend. In spring she declines a trip to Mexico with her friends but travels with them as far as Texas. She shows up at his apartment and they play house for a week.
Then they have to finish school and things get tough. They don't fight. People—everybody—thinks it's impossible but they honestly don't fight. They got all that shit out of their systems early, Noah says. Neither likes the distance though.
Noah goes up to New York for her graduation. He doesn't tell her where he disappears to when her Dads take her out shopping. She flies from Lima with his mother and sister to attend his graduation. He tells her where he'd been in New York the night before the ceremony.
In typical Noah fashion, he just tells her there's something he wants her to read and tosses a letter in her lap. She scans the page then hits him hard in the arm.
"You could have told me!" she shrieks. He would be more worried if her smile wasn't so blindingly bright.
They move into their new New York apartment together a month and a half later. The first picture Rachel puts on the mantle is stolen from her fathers' study.
That night Noah and his guitar sing to her as they sit flat on their uncarpeted floors.
the end
Prompt: img375 . imageshack . us / i / tumblrl8zsl3q8pw1qb4yo4 . jpg /