Part Two – December 2017

It's been eleven months since Puck found Rachel working as a maid in a New York City hotel instead of in a theatre. It's been seven months since he went back to New York to see how shitty she'd let her life become. And it's been two months since his last visit, and here he is again while Kerosene finalizes the new album. He's got a photoshoot next week, but tonight his only mission is to check on Rachel. He's seen her several times and kept in contact, but even though she tells him she's doing a lot better he has a sneaking suspicion that that's changed since his last visit.

And he's got a surprise for her, too. Two days ago he terminated the lease on his L.A. apartment and is moving to New York full-time. Well, not for her. She's not the reason he's moving out here, but it helps that he can keep a closer watch on her when he's in the same city. But Kerosene's main building is in New York, so he justifies that he's moving for work.

He's in a cab on the way to the Bronx when he feels his phone buzz in his pocket. Pulling it out, he consciously chooses to ignore the call. Naomi has been psychotic about New York ever since he came back for the first time. The pictures of Rachel and him back in January didn't even catch her face, so no one knew who she was, but his mother was convinced that she must be having (another) illegitimate child of his if he insists on going back and forth to New York all the time. He wasn't about to tell his mother, Temple Gossip Extraordinaire, about Rachel, so he generally avoided talking about the Big Apple all together.

He pays the cabbie and steps out onto the sidewalk in front of Rachel's building as his phone rings again. It's Kara this time, but he's not as dumb as his mother seems to think he is. He thinks about hitting ignore (again), but he also knows that if his mother is getting Kara in on this she won't stop bugging him until he answers.

"Yes, mother?" He doesn't even try hiding the annoyance in his voice. He almost, almost, wants to laugh when he hears the two passing the phone back and forth and arguing over who will actually ask anything. Kara must win because in a minute or so his mother's shrill voice is blaring in his ear drum.

"Noah David Puckerman! You tell me what you're doing in New York this instant, or so help me-"

"Jesus fucking Christ, Ma! I'm not deaf! I can hear you perfectly fine!"

"Don't you speak to me that way, young man." He knows Naomi's pissed, but honestly, he doesn't care anymore. That woman's been driving him insane for months now. "Now, tell me who this girl is that you're just dropping everything to be with. Your manager says you've given up your apartment in LA and plan on moving to the city! Have you lost your mind, Noah?"

"The label's main building and studio are here, mother, and in case you don't recall: I lived here for four years in college. Maybe I've just decided I miss it, is that so hard to believe."

"Yes." He hears Kara in the background voicing her agreement and as much as he loves his little sister, he wants to reach through the phone and punch her right now. She hasn't mentioned anything about Rachel to anyone, but she also doesn't know much except that she's not on Broadway like everyone thought she'd be. "Noah, I just want to understand what is in that city that keeps taking you away from me."

"When I figure it out, I'll let you know." He doesn't give her anytime to respond, just hangs up and turns the phone off before he rings the buzzer to let Rachel know he's here. She doesn't even respond, just buzzes him in and he's up the stairs in a matter of minutes. He doesn't bother knocking; if she buzzed him in she knows she's coming so he just lets himself and is pleasantly surprised by what he sees.

Rachel's sitting cross-legged on the floor with a newspaper spread out in front of her and a highlighter in her right hand. She doesn't even look up at him as she makes mark after mark on the paper. Puck sets his duffle bag down by the door and walks around the coffee table to sit on the couch behind her. She gestures wildly with her left arm towards the kitchen and when he follows with his eyes he sees that she's already got cartons of Chinese food waiting for him. He's in the kitchen and back to the couch with the sweet and sour pork so fast it makes Rachel smirk a little. After a couple careful bites, he leans over her shoulder to see what it is that she's circling: apartments.

"You're moving?" Puck puts the pork down and snatches the paper from her to see where it is she's planning on moving. There's a few apartments circled in Brooklyn, one that's still in the Bronx and he sees one dramatic circle around a place in Jersey. "How are you gonna afford to move, B?"

Rachel's quiet for a minute, and he's terrified she's going to tell him that one of her "friends" is getting her a place. Finally, though, she puts the cap back on the highlighter and turns to look at him.

"I got a new job. They're paying me a whole lot more than I was making at that damn hotel. I'm teaching music and a performing arts high school."

"You're singing again?" Puck perked up and could tell her looked like a complete moron right now but Rachel singing again was news of monumental proportions.

"I said music, not vocals." Rachel glared at him and Puck could feel the color draining from his face. "I'm teaching cello and piano."

"Can you even hold a cello?" Puck prays that's enough to lighten the mood and when her shoulders relax and her eyes soften he knows he's done his job.

"I'll have you know, Puckerman, that I took cello lessons from age six until I graduated high school, thank you very much."

Puck grins as she continues to flip through the pages and circles a few more ads before she tells him to help himself and goes into the bedroom to call around. Half an hour later she's back in the living room asking him if he'd like to come look at a few apartments with her.

After they've seen seven apartments in six hours, Rachel's signing the lease and handing over a deposit check for an apartment in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. It's a small building, so the apartments are a bit bigger, and the one she's got the keys for certainly is bigger than the one she's in now, and the neighborhood's better so Puck's pretty satisfied.

They stop at a café they spotted a few blocks away and they each get a pastry and some coffee before venturing out onto the streets. It's late, and the old Rachel would never allow herself to be eating carbs so late at night, but Puck's glad this Rachel is allowing herself to eat at all, considering how thin she still was.

He asks her about the school she's teaching at and she says it's great, that she's only been working there a few weeks and that the kids were incredible. She says it almost (yeah, he caught that 'almost') makes her miss sharing the same dreams as them. He tells her it's not too late and she scoffs and gives him an eye roll. He knows better by now than to argue with her, but he's determined to take her back to Lima for the holidays and get her to sing. Apparently she hasn't done any of that in the past three years and there's just something… wrong about it. He figures she'd be a lot less unhappy if she did.

When they get back to the Bronx and are walking up the three flights of stairs, Noah sees her hand twitch several times within a few minutes and it makes him want to punch a whole through the paper thin walls. Once inside her apartment, he grabs his duffle bag and is out the door before she can say anything.

The entire cab right to the Plaza Puck tells himself that just because she's clearly craving some sort of fix – he's not even sure what, exactly, because when she finally owned up it turned out she had a lot more problems than coke, weed and vodka – doesn't mean she's going to give in. He checks into a room and after he's showered and is finally lying in bed he turns his cell back on. Eleven messages.

The first six are from his mother, threatening to never speak to him if he doesn't call her back immediately. Three are from Kara; the first two asking him to please call Naomi before she gave herself an ulcer, and the third asking him to please call her back because she's worried. The next one is just about three seconds of silence, but the last one definitely catches his attention.

"Hey, if this is Noah then you need to get down to The Big Apple. This is Joe, the owner. Rachel's here and she got trashed pretty quick. Some guy tried to take her home and she kept telling him he wasn't Noah. I haven't seen Rach in almost three months, and I usually just call her a cab but she keeps asking for you."

Puck jots down the address of the bar and is flying out of the bed and into a pair of jeans and a hoodie. He puts back on the aviators he's been wearing all day and goes downstairs to hail a cab. They pull up to the bar nearly forty minutes later and a tall, buff guy is holding Rachel by the elbow with a serious look on his face while she laughs hysterically about something. He jumps out of the cab and hands the guy a twenty, thanking him for helping her out before he ushers her into the cab.

She's still laughing as the driver pulls away from the curb and Puck would find it amusing in any other situation. Instead, he's snapping his fingers in front of her face until she acknowledges that he's there.

"I'm not a dog, Noah." She's slurring her words a bit, but she's starting to sober up a little so he doesn't tell her that.

"Jesus, Rachel…" He runs a hand through his short hair and leans back against the seat. "Why do you keep doing this, huh? You are so much better than all this shit."

"You sound like my fathers." Rachel's annoyed, he can tell, but she never mentions her fathers and he wants to know what's going on.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"The last time I spoke to them, they told me I was better than all this and that I needed to get my act together before they would speak to me again but they're the biggest reason my life is so fucked up right now."

Puck's still shocked at how often Drunk Rachel drops the F-bomb, but he doesn't interrupt because he wants to know.

"Literally since I was born they've done nothing but shove theatre and showbiz and music down my throat and it's all I've ever known and all I've ever loved. The only sport I've ever even been in is competitive ballet and the now the only thing I know how to be passionate about is gone and it's all their fault."

"They're not the ones who turned you down, Rachel." He points out

"But they didn't let me do anything else, either." Rachel says seriously, staring at the roof of the cab. "All they ever wanted was for me to be a star, so you can imagine they're disappointment that nobody here wants me."

Rachel tips her head back and closes her eyes and doesn't budge until the cab stops in front of the Plaza. She stares at the building and is obviously confused so Puck grabs her hand and pulls her inside and to the elevators. She's chattering on and on about what a good friend he was and how glad she was that he was in town for a while and he's planning his next big speech because this one needs to work.

She's sprawled out on his bed his shirt and sweatpants, eyes fluttering open and closed so he knows he can't say anything tonight, but he's going to make her see that she's not just killing herself, she's killing him, too.

The next morning when he wakes up, she's not in the bed but he hears the shower so he doesn't immediately go into panic mode. He walks into the kitchen area and starts a pot of coffee before resuming his place on the bed and flipping on the TV. He's drinking his second cup of coffee and halfway through 'Fight Club' when he realizes that the shower's still running and Rachel hasn't come out yet. He springs from the bed and bangs on the door frantically.

"Rach? You ok?"

"I'm fine! I'll be out in a minute!" She answers and he feels himself relax knowing she hasn't passed out in there. When she steps out of the bathroom, she's back in the jeans and sweater she was wearing the day before and carefully hands him the clothes she borrowed to sleep in. Without hesitation, he grabs her wrist and jerks the sleeve of the sweater up and when he sees the cuts he barely registers that she's saying "I'm sorry" as she jerks away from him and cradles her arm to her chest.

"You keep saying that." Puck says evenly, not allowing any anger or hurt to be reflected in his voice. "But, somehow, I don't think you're all that sorry because you keep doing shit like this." She looks down and he doesn't wait for her to answer before he gets into the shower.

There's a good chance she'll leave while he's in the shower and he won't get to say his piece, but he needs to calm himself down before he says anything else. He takes his time letting the heat of the shower spray relax him and soothe his somewhat aching muscles. Plaza or not, a floor is still a floor and his back doesn't appreciate it much. He's shell-shocked and speechless when he steps back into the room and finds Rachel lying flat on her back staring at the ceiling.

"You're still here." He states dumbly after staring at her for several minutes. She doesn't look at him or say anything for a while. When she does speak, the speech he has planned goes right out the window.

"Why do you care so much, Noah?" She brings on arm up behind her head like a pillow and places the other over abdomen but keeps her gaze firmly on the ceiling. "We've known each other since we were two years old and we've never been particularly close friends, I mean… I was with your best friend for half of high school; my own mother adopted Beth and you barely acknowledged me. Why do you care now what I'm doing or how I'm living my life?"

"Because after knowing what I know, I would hate myself if I just walked away." His answer is immediate and comes to him with no real thought process. "I mean, I hate myself all the time because I don't feel like I've done shit to help you and lord knows I'm trying."

"I don't know if you recall this or not, Noah, but I never asked you to help me."

"You shouldn't have to!" Puck doesn't mean to yell, really, but he's heard her say she doesn't want or need help over and over again for months now. Sometimes it's because she's too proud to admit how far things have gotten and sometimes it's because she honestly doesn't realize she has a problem and he just can't take it anymore. "Jesus, Rachel, you think I want to see you do this shit to yourself? This is the first I've seen you and you weren't doing something stupid; snorting lines, huffing shit I've never even heard of, half the times I've been here you were high as goddamn kite and you had to go and do that? You have so much going for you, and you're talented beyond comprehension. I get that you didn't get what you've always wanted but what about that is worth ruining your life over?"

"You don't understand, Noah. You've had everything handed to you on a silver platter and you don't even deserve it." Her words sting a lot more than they should, but she kind of has a point. He didn't ask for the life he has, but who was he to question the cards fate had dealt him? "Is it so wrong that I just want to escape for a while? Forget that I'm never going to get the only thing I ever wanted? I just feel numb every single day, Noah. Singing fixed that in high school but it doesn't help anymore. If anything, it's a reminder that I'm never enough."

"So you shoot up and carve yourself instead? That makes a whole lot of fucking sense, Rachel."

Rachel's crying now and he doesn't even try to stop her as she storms out of the hotel. She's right; she didn't ask for his help so maybe he should just leave her alone. Let her walk out and figure things out on her own if that's what she wants.

His resolve to "just leave her alone" lasts all of two weeks before he finds himself dialing her number and asking her out to lunch. She agrees, but her "yeah, ok, sure" gives him the impression that she's doing so under protest.

When he sees her, she looks tired and her hair is messy, as if she's just rolled out of bed and she doesn't even speak to him when she sits down at his table. She picks up a menu and scans over it for about seven seconds before she puts it down again. She's sitting there for probably ten more minutes before the waitress comes over and asks if she can take their order. When she recognizes Puck, he spends almost half an hour taking pictures and signing autographs and completely dodging questions about Rachel. After it's over, he sees the look on her face and he'd give anything to be invisible to the world.

"That should be me." She doesn't sound upset or anything, just as tired as she looks.

"One day, when you love yourself enough to stop hurting yourself the way you are, it will be. You can argue all you want, but I'm not leaving you alone until you're singing from the rooftops or whatever." He hopes he sounds reassuring, because it's all he's got to offer for now. Her eyes water, but she doesn't shed a single tear and for the first time since he's started coming to see her, she gives him a full-on Rachel Berry smile so he figures they're finally moving in the right direction.

Thank you so much for the reviews and alerts! I didn't think I'd get much of a response from this, so thank you! This one is relatively short, but I'm already hard at work on Part Three which, I think, is going to be the best of the three. It picks up in March 2019 and will be a lot longer than the first two parts. I started writing that one first, actually. Anyway, enough with the long A/N. Let me know what you think. Inspiration for this part came from Lady Antebellum's "One Day You Will", if you'd like to check that out.