Disclaimer: I do not own Glee or any of its characters and I am making no money writing this. It's just for fun. Title and cut text taken from "Long December" by Counting Crows.
Quinn hated the winter. All she could think as she schlepped her suitcase up the steps of the ski chalet was how much she hated this whole fucking season. The cold bite of winter made her feel so much older than twenty-seven and that was just wrong.
The snow, the freezing rain, the ice she slipped on no less than three times a week…it was all a nightmare.
She yanked the knit hat off of her head, its fluffy tassel swinging wildly as she slammed it down on the counter next to the service bell.
"Hello?" she called, hitting the bell twice.
Yes, she was that rude, bitchy customer that everyone hated. She couldn't help it, though; traveling here had made her completely miserable.
"Can I help you…ma'am?" a slight man in his mid-thirties asked flatly. He looked beyond thrilled to be dealing with Quinn and the feeling was mutual.
"I need to check in," she told him, her voice full of her HBIC attitude and brimming with false sweetness. What reason other than checking in did she have for standing here with her bags piled up next to her? Sometimes, it was like she was the only one in the world that knew how to do her job properly.
"Name?" he asked, exasperated.
"Quinn Fabray," she told him shortly, digging her wallet out of her bag.
"There you are," he said, fingers clacking against the keys of the keyboard in front of him.
"There shouldn't be any charge. This…vacation was a…gift," she muttered. She noted the name printed on guy's name tag read "Colin."
"Someone must love you very much," Colin deadpanned, mumbling the words can't imagine whyunder his breath.
"Ugh, my mother. I don't know how many times I've told her that I hate the snow, but she just, like, refuses to believe me," Quinn ranted, growing increasingly warm in the heated lobby and starting to peel her giant parka off her small form.
"Hmm," he replied, completely disinterested as he continued to stare at the computer screen.
Quinn looked around the lobby of the large, expensive, exclusive ski lodge. It was nice, she supposed…if you were into that sort of thing. If she had to be here, she decided, she would just spend the entire time drinking one Irish Coffee after another and reading trashy romance novels next to the fire. She could pass four days like that.
"Here's your room key," Colin told her, sliding a card across the desk. "Enjoy your stay."
He started to walk back to the office behind the front desk when Quinn stopped him.
"Wait," she called.
He turned slowly to face her again, a sigh passing through his lips. "Yes?"
"If this place is so great, where are all the guests?" she asked, gesturing to the empty lobby.
"Most of our guests are, you know, skiing right now. But, you're right; we are emptier than we normally would be. A huge company retreat booked about half of our rooms and they had to cancel at the last minute due to the storms in Asia," he explained.
"Oh. Okay, so…it'll be pretty quiet around here?"
"Relatively, yes."
"Is there anything to do besides skiing?"
"Are you kidding?" he asked, laughing.
"Do I look like I'm kidding?" she asked, staring hard into his eyes.
Colin rolled his eyes and reached to hand her a brochure.
"I think you'd enjoy our spa. It's one of the best in the Western Hemisphere, and since your trip here is a gift…"
For half a second, Quinn saw the knowing understanding of someone with an overbearing mother flicker in his eyes.
"Thanks." She smiled for the first time all day, kicking her rolling suitcase back to pull it along with her to her room.
Quinn stepped into the elevator and sighed. Pushing the button for the fifth floor, she focused her thoughts on the Jacuzzi tub that was waiting for her in her room. Then she would order a bottle of wine and something extremely unhealthy (chocolate cake and fries sounded good) for dinner from room service. Maybe she'd try to find a George Clooney movie on pay-per-view.
This was a vacation, after all. She was supposed to unwind, and do things to make herself happy.
The ding of the elevator pulled her from her thoughts and she scrambled to get herself and her behemoth of a suitcase through the heavy brass doors before they closed.
She trudged down the thickly carpeted hallway, her suitcase trailing behind her, alternately scanning the numbers on the doors and looking down at the spa brochure.
517.
She felt a wave of excitement hit her as she slid her keycard into the slot on the handle. Her room, finally. A bed, finally. The chance to get out of her cold, wet clothes, finally.
. . . . . . . . . .
The room was gorgeous and the tub had been everything Quinn dreamt of and more.
She had turned the faucet on to an absolutely scalding temperature, stripped off her layers of winter clothes and slipped into the pool of steaming, sweet scented water as fast as possible.
Twenty minutes later she woke up feeling inexplicably chilled, without even realizing she'd fallen asleep.
Now Quinn was reclined against the pillows in the bed, eating a gooey, molten chocolaty brownie-cake and drinking a bottle of pinot noir, watching Gentlemen Prefer Blondes on the classic movie channel.
Somewhere in the middle of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," Quinn started thinking about her love life, or lack thereof. It was hard not to think about romance with Marilyn gracing the screen on the wall.
She'd been on three dates in the last year, all with guys that turned out to be major creeps. Time was a luxury for Quinn, a precious and rare commodity in her job. She didn't want to keep wasting it on people that weren't worth it, but at the same time she knew if she didn't invest time in finding a good date, she'd keep repeating the same mistakes and ending up in bed on Saturday nights with her cat, Jerry.
Thinking about the whole thing was enough to make her sick to her stomach, and she piled her dishes up on the room service tray to set it outside her door.
She set it down, and the ice bucket they had insisted on giving her dumped over.
"Fuck!" she swore, bending down to pick up the stray cubes that had scattered all over the hallway.
"Need some help?"
Quinn froze, an ice cube clenched in her palm. She knew that voice. She hadn't heard that voice in years, but she would recognize it anywhere.
"Wow," she breathed, looking up at Noah Puckerman. The mohawk was gone, and his broad chest had more muscle built up than it had the last time she'd seen him, but it was undeniably him.
"Need some help?" he asked again, bending to kneel next to her.
Nodding, she rushed to explain the pile of dishes covered in chocolate, ketchup and Ranch dressing: "I know this looks…gross…"
"I've seen you eat chocolate pudding with jalapeños, so…this looks pretty normal," he chuckled.
Ah, yes. That was why she hadn't spoken to him in so long. They had way too much history, history which he wasn't even pretending to tiptoe around anymore, apparently.
"I almost forgot about that," she mumbled, blushing as she threw the last ice cube into the bucket. "Well. Not that, just…that I ate that."
"What are you doing here?" he asked after a moment of long, tense silence. "You hate the cold."
He remembered. That fact threw her off balance, and she just shook her head slightly.
"I, um. The trip was a gift from my mom." She was so flustered by seeing him that she didn't even lie, couldn't think to make up any kind of lie about a guy waiting for her in her room. "You?"
"This is the first real vacation I've had in two years, so I decided to go all out. Snowboarding for a week by myself on some of the best runs in the world sounded pretty good."
He was here alonewas the only thing she really absorbed from what he said. He was smiling at her, easily slipping into a conversation with her, and she had to wonder if it went beyond nostalgia for him.
"So you've been here for a week?" she asked, fiddling with the tie of her robe. She couldn't tell if she was hopeful or not, whether she wanted him to be almost gone, or whether she wanted to run into him again.
"Nah, just a couple of days."
Oh. So they would most likely be seeing more of each other. More than that, they could be leaving at the same time.
"Well," she smiled at him, trying to ignore what seemed like one coincidence too many. "I hope you enjoy the rest of your vacation."
"Same to you." She didn't think she was imagining the tone he had there, like he was looking forward to seeing more of her. In the pit of her stomach, in a place she was trying very hard to ignore, she hoped she wasn't.
With a wink, he disappeared into the room next door to hers.
Quinn's cheeks suddenly felt like they were on fire. Oh, fuck. The coincidences kept piling on.
. . . . . . . . . .
The next day, Quinn didn't leave her room until almost two in the afternoon.
She spent the morning thinking about her response to seeing Puck, analyzing it to hell and back.
Sure, she hadn't had sex in way too long, and hadn't had good sex in even longer. Yes, he had been her first and there had always been a certain pull to him. Of course, he was still as attractive as he always had been, maybe even more now that he had built up some more muscle.
But…it hadn't been just physical. She felt…something. She had no idea what, or if it was just the fact that she was so desperate for an emotional connection to another human being, but there was just…something there. Surprises hadn't been kind to Quinn in the past, but she could only hope that this one would be different.
When she finally did venture out, she passed over all the sweats she packed, instead choosing to wear an olive sweater that made her eyes pop and a pair of jeans that made her ass look irresistible.
Sauntering down to the lounge with her book in hand, she tried to convince herself that she didn't care if she saw him, and that she didn't even know what she would do if she did. She was just going downstairs to read and try to enjoy herself. She was just going to watch the snow fall from a toasty spot next to the fire.
But she still looked up every five minutes or so, her heart beating a little faster as she searched for his face.
He never showed up and she tried not to be disappointed.
. . . . . . . . . .
At dinner, she forced herself to go to the restaurant after dressing up her outfit with a pair of plum Manolos and earrings that were far too ostentatious for her to ever wear to work.
Had she not been eating alone, she would have ordered a salad and a club soda with lemon. But she was, so she didn't.
She got through half of the steak she ordered and three Manhattans before she gave up and had a crème brulee brought over.
Ever since high school, food had been an indicator of Quinn's mood. When she was feeling good, she ate healthily, all salads and fish. When she was sad, her apartment smelled like banana bread. Tonight, she was lonely, hence the liquor and heavy, rich food.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a tanned hand with a very familiar bracelet holding a tall glass of dark beer.
"Can I sit?"
Swallowing the bite of custard and washing it down with a sip of her drink, she nodded at the chair across the table from her.
"Man, this place is like a ghost town," he laughed, settling into the chair like he was at home and not a five star resort.
She had always loved that about him. A place was a place and he didn't really care about how he was supposed to act. The few times he'd been to her parents' house in high school, he had just swaggered in like he owned the place, stopping just short of plopping down on the couch and asking where her dad kept the beer.
"I know," she grinned back, her dessert forgotten for the moment.
"So, what did you get up to today?" he asked before taking a long sip from his beer.
Quinn couldn't stop herself and just laughed.
"How do you do that?" she asked in astonishment. "We haven't seen each other in almost a decade, yet you're acting like it was just yesterday."
"I figured we'd ease into the whole 'where have you been, what have you been doing' thing," he shrugged, a bit of an edge to his voice.
"Oh," she mumbled, pushing a shard of burnt sugar around her dish. "Well. I…read for a while. You?"
"More snowboarding," he responded genially. "But I think I'll spend tomorrow inside."
She was about to respond with something lame like, "I can point you toward the most comfortable chairs," but she stopped herself. It was completely ludicrous to be basically talking about the weather with him; with anyone she hadn't seen in years, but especially him.
"Why didn't you seem surprised to see me in the hallway?" she asked, staring across the table at him, sliding the cocktail straw of her drink into the side of her mouth.
"I heard you checking in," he smirked.
"I'm not usually such a bitch," she responded immediately, rolling her eyes.
"To be fair, it did sound like the guy was holding his own."
After a long moment of silence Puck reached over and scooped a blueberry out of her custard dish.
"So, tell me about your life," she said, the stolen blueberry halfway to his mouth. "What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a psychologist."
"No, seriously," she said, laughing harder than she had in a week. "What do you do?"
"I'm a psychologist. Seriously." He didn't seem offended by her reaction, which was good. But she still kind of felt like an idiot.
"God, I'm sorry. I just…didn't expect that," she mumbled, blushing.
"Most people don't," he shrugged. "I just had an epiphany after I dropped out for a semester. My sister was having a hard time in school, and she was talking to me about it a lot. It was weird. I remembered all the heavy stuff I could have used help dealing with and…found a calling."
Sheepish wasn't a look Quinn was used to seeing on Noah Puckerman's face. She remembered the angry boy she used to know and reached across the table to take his hand in hers.
"I'm really proud of you," she told him seriously, barely getting the words out through a throat that was far tighter than it should have been.
"What about you?" he asked quietly, running his thumb across the back of her hand.
Quinn laughed softly before saying, "Not nearly as noble or interesting, but I'm an architect."
"That's perfect," Puck said immediately.
"Really? How come?"
"Sophomore year of high school, we had to sketch something from around Lima for art class. You chose the Catholic church because it was the most beautiful building in town."
Quinn nodded. She remembered. It was right after she moved in with him and her entire life had gone to hell. She threw herself into that assignment like nothing she ever had before, aside from cheerleading. She made sure every last detail was perfect, and when she got an A on it, she cried.
"If I'm recalling correctly, and I am, you turned in a half-assed sketch of the scoreboard and called it 'metaphorical.'"
"Yes, I did," he grinned, draining the last of his beer.
They talked for another two hours about anything and everything, all the while avoiding one particular subject. Quinn knew he'd seen the same photos she did from her latest ballet recital, so she kept the focus on them and their lives. They talked about his family and her family, jobs, political views, sports, and eventually, the lack of true love in their respective lives.
"Really, I want to know. When was the last time you got laid?" he was on his fourth beer, and the expression on his face had turned into something less friendly and more…something else.
"It's embarrassing," she stressed, her face was turning red, partly from the topic of conversation and partly from the amount of alcohol in her system. Met with an unflinching stare from him, she finally conceded, sighing. "Fine. It was New Year's Eve."
"Well that's not so-"
"New Year's Eve before last."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
She knew there would be no mistaking the intent in her gaze then, the way her eyes lingered on his hands, his eyes, his throat. She signaled to the waiter that they were done, and she didn't give a second thought to the enormous bar tab that would be charged to her room as she tilted her head and bit her lip just so.
. . . . . . . . . .
The way he kissed her in the elevator made her feel like a teenager again.
That wasn't a surprise; it was Puck, after all. Even though he no longer smelled like motor oil and clove cigarettes, he was still the first boy that ever managed to charm her. The part that really surprised her was that she felt like a teenager again in a good way.
She could remember about five times since college when she had let go and just done something that felt good. On the plane ride here, she had thought that she needed to do things like that more often.
Sleeping with an ex on vacation definitely counted as letting go, and the way he was sucking and licking at her pulse point definitely felt good.
"Oh my God," she gasped, hitching her legs up around his waist, one of her shoes falling off in the process.
He just moaned in response, grinding his hips against hers.
After a lot of stumbling, and a particularly painful hit to her side that she was sure would leave a bruise, they finally made it to his room.
He kneeled on the bed, Quinn still in his arms, his lips still kissing every inch of her exposed skin. Pulling him with her, Quinn rocked back to fall against the pillows piled up near the headboard.
Her other shoe had been lost at the threshold, and she slid her bare feet back along the bedspread, bending her knees and cradling his hips against hers, slipping her tongue into his mouth.
"Missed you," she sighed, so close to his mouth that they were breathing the same air.
He responded by pulling her into another hard kiss, and that was just fine. Puck was always better at showing her how he was feeling, rather than telling her.
Her sweater was gone before she knew what happened and then his hands were wrapped around the waistband of her unbuttoned jeans, pulling them down over her hips.
Feeling suddenly vulnerable in nothing but her bra and panties, she reached up to tug at his pants and shirt, trying to get them off as fast as possible. She popped three buttons off, but he didn't seem to mind, and she was pretty sure that seven seconds was a personal best for her for undressing another person.
"Fuck," Puck hissed, leaning into her to kiss her again. It was like he needed to kiss her to breathe, she thought, feeling the same fire in her chest.
"Please," she begged, reaching back to unhook her bra and wiggling her hips in a futile effort to get her panties off, create some friction, something.
"I got you, babe," he murmured into her stomach, kissing her before ripping her panties off her hips and throwing the scrap of fabric over the side of the bed.
He rolled on a condom that she hadn't registered him moving away from her to get. She was so thankful for him then, because in the haze of lust she was feeling, she hadn't even thought about that and they had been there before.
When he thrust into her for the first time, his forehead leaned against hers and his eyes meeting her gaze, it was better than she imagined it would be. He was big, but not in a painful way, and she relished the feeling of being full, arching off the bed as he started to move within her.
Had she been asked, she probably wouldn't have been able to remember much from the last time she was with him. It was a long time ago, after all. But her body somehow remembered every last detail, and that was amazing.
The memories of before and sensations of the moment all hit her at once, and it was enough to make her moan into his mouth. Writhing beneath him, she met him thrust for thrust and let him pin her arm to the bed, his fingers tangled with hers.
A tiny adjustment coupled with a thrust that was harder than she had expected sent her over the edge. Flushed and heated, she tightened her legs around his waist, urging him in as deep as possible while her walls pulsed around him.
When he collapsed against her, one sweaty chest plastered to another, she let out a long breath, and felt a weight she didn't realize she was carrying lift off her shoulders.
. . . . . . . . . .
Quinn woke to the sound of the shower filtering out through the open bathroom door and the bright, Colorado sun streaming in through the window.
She sat up in the bed, the sheet pooling at her waist as she drew her knees up to her chest just as the shower shut off. A few seconds later, not nearly enough time for her to form a coherent thought, Puck came swaggering into the room, a towel wrapped low around his hips.
"Good morning," he smiled, sitting down on the opposite edge of the bed to pull on a pair of boxer briefs.
The thing that she had been feeling since she woke up finally formed into something she could articulate then.
She was happy. For the first time in what seemed like forever, she actually felt happy; happy to be alive, happy to be in her own skin, and most of all, happy to be here.
"Good morning," she greeted, her small hand wrapping around his bicep to pull him in for a kiss. His large, rough hands skimmed across her shoulder blades as he held her tighter against him, almost crushing her naked chest into his.
"What's next?" she whispered, tracing his jaw with her thumb and smiling wider than she thought was possible.
It didn't even matter what his answer was. She already felt the truth in her bones, in her soul, as crazy as that sounded. She knew that whatever came next, something better would come after it, and that they would be together through it all.
. . . . . . . . . .
The End.