Thursday, February 14, 2013.
4:29pm.
For Belle.
Live.
2
The Call
"You're lying."
"I am not."
"You are fucking lying to me right now."
"When have I ever lied to you?!" Rachel cried indignantly.
Puck scoffed. "I guess now's a good time to start."
"Noah, I am not lying—seriously! Blaine and Kurt adopted a baby from the Philippines," she said. "He's about sixteen months already, and he's absolutely ador—"
"Yeah, yeah, he's cute, but I'm still stuck on the name—you've gotta be shitting me about that."
Rachel huffed, and he could hear her rolling her eyes and throwing her head back in frustration.
"'Cause seriously, baby. I know Kurt would never, in a million fucking years, name his first child Andrew Anderson," Puck said. "Unless he was drunk. Was he drunk?"
"No, Kurt was sober—"
"Then Blaine threatened him by withholding goodies, didn't he? That conniving little hobbit."
"Blaine did no such thing!" she snapped. "They named the baby after a friend of theirs that helped push the adoption through. For God's sake, Noah, you idiot."
Puck chortled and forked up the last of the apple pie. "Can you blame me though? Jesus Christ, Andy Anderson. Kid's gonna get flak for that when he gets to school."
"That's mean."
"That's the truth," Puck said simply. "Kids are always either the sweetest or meanest humans. Our old group should be the resident experts on that, remember? Does he have a middle name?"
"True," Rachel agreed. "And it's Joseph. Andrew Joseph Anderson."
"AJ then," Puck said flatly, tossing his fork into the sink and throwing out the pie container.
"Fine! What would you name your kids?" she asked testily.
He'd totally planned it out over a decade ago—during a Smallville marathon and a long-winded sermon at JCC. "Jonathan and Isaiah."
Her five-second pause told him enough to know she remembered too. But then she tried to salvage herself by maintaining her snooty tone. "And you're so confident that you'd have two boys? You've already had one girl, Noah."
"Well, then knowing who my wife would be, I'm pretty sure we'd name her after a song."
"Sharona? Valerie?"
"Christ, Berry, who do you think I'll be married to?"
"Sarah? God forbid—Billie Jean? Or…"
He let her list off as many songs named after women for a couple minutes until he finally went, "Woman. Shut up."
"Okay, then what would you and your unfortunate wife name her?"
He smiled, knowing his answer would send her into a tailspin. "Caroline." He heard her flop down somewhere in a huff, and they sat together for a couple minutes. Then he decided to save her. "So I told you about Tom, right?"
"Yes, he's your business partner who deals with the financial and managerial side of Jericho Sound," she recited proudly. She still wasn't over the fact that he was the co-owner of a major company already. He was kind of offended. He said that he had star potential—he hadn't been kidding about that shit, you know. "Why? Is everything all right? I heard you cracked the top ten list of sound and material quality. Your guitars especially are selling like it's the music apocalypse."
Okay, he wasn't offended anymore. He was just really fucking smug. "Yeah, he's fine—charming the pants off those investors in L.A. Apparently, we're in real huge demand right now."
"I hear a 'but' somewhere there."
Puck walked out of his kitchen and to the living room, where he flopped down onto the couch. "He gave me some news that Sam and Mike aren't gonna be real happy about."
"What? Why?"
"I'm moving. Or I might be. I've already established the company here in Chicago well enough, so now he's tossing me somewhere else."
"But what about your guitar store?"
Puck rubbed the top of his closely-shaved head and sighed. "We kept the stores small to make sure we're still intimate with the customers and the ones taking lessons, but we're still technically branches. Eric Johnson will take over the Chicago branch—he's the one you nearly gave a heart attack to when you decided to call me in the middle of work."
"Don't berate me for your employee's good taste. So where will you be going?"
"It's not set yet. We've got stores opening in Austin, Orlando, Montgomery, and, like, six other cities. I could be going to any one of those," Puck answered casually. As if it wasn't a really big fucking deal. But he was a Puckerman, remember? He was calm; he was cool.
"Noah! That's spectacular! Why didn't you say anything before?!" she cried.
"I told you now, didn't I?" he said cheekily.
She legitimately growled at him. It was the funniest thing. "I'm going to hang up on you. There's only so much of your attitude I can take in one night."
He snorted and flicked on the TV. "You're not gonna hang up." Supernatural marathon on TNT—of course.
"One of these days, Noah Puckerman," she threatened. "One of these days… Now, do I hear Sam and Dean arguing back there? I was just talking to my cast mate about that show…"
When Sam first posed the idea, Puck was like, "No."
When Sam started decorating and asked Puck to do it again, Puck was like, "Hell no."
When Sam finished decorating and putting on his costume and asked Puck to do it for the third time, Puck was like, "Holy shitballs, Trouty Mouth, no."
Ain't no way he was gonna play minstrel to a bunch of cosplaying weirdos coming to Sam's mini Comic-Con event—of which the entrance to the shop was disguised in a blue police box, of which the drinks and pastries were shaped, colored, and bottled like props straight outta Harry Potter, of which the comic book shop owner was dressed as Captain America.
He was dead serious, yo.
Sam went all-out for this. His shop was bigger, and he'd already gotten two comic books series published, so he could totally afford it. But this was ridiculous.
The connection door was totally gonna be locked.
And then he saw Kristen, Cassidy, and Laura—Sam's employees—walk into the shop as Black Widow, Maria Hill, and Scarlet Witch respectively, and decided God might be okay with him helping Sam. Then a bunch of chicks danced into the shop barefoot in short, filmy dresses with flowery crowns on their heads, calling themselves nymphs, and he rethought his stance. Then came the battle-armored warrior goddesses wearing leather and metal and wielding swords, whips, and chains, and the next thing he knew, he was locking his shop's front door and was propping open the connecting door while Eric and Mike set up the instruments.
"Puck, are you sure you're up for this?" Sam asked for the five-hundredth time. "I mean, I know I asked you to do it, but if you really, really don't want to or something, you can go home."
Puck blinked and nonchalantly picked up the stapler. "Evans," he said calmly. "So help me God, if you ask me that question one more time, I will shove this stapler so far up your ass you'll be burping staples for a month."
"Sam, go…use that shield as some sort of serving dish or something. Just go away," Mike sighed, shoving Sam back through the door.
"Chang, do not disgrace the shield!" Sam cried before immediately being engulfed by his customers who demanded to know if it was an authentic prop from the movie.
Mike turned Puck and frowned seriously. "But seriously, dude. Tell the truth. Are you okay? 'Cause one day, you were looking like a zombie, and the next morning, you were whistling Don't Rain On My Parade."
You'd think that these two would be all relieved that he was fine, that he hadn't had any episodes for the past three days—three days that just coincidentally ended with a conversation with one Rachel Berry, but they didn't need to know that. But, no. They weren't relieved. They were on edge, thinking this was only the calm before the storm and he'd keel over any second.
"I'm fine," Puck insisted, setting the stapler back on the counter. "My meds worked."
"Horseshit, Puckerman," Mike retorted. "Don't lie to me."
Puck threw his head back and groaned. "Look, just…trust me, okay? I'm fine now. I swear." He appreciated the fact that they cared and shit (and took his mom seriously when she ordeered them to take care of him as if he wasn't the one watching out for their asses for years), but he needed this shit to stop. "The moment you see me zoning out again, you have full rights to drag me outta here and to the nearest hospital. But until then, Chang, could you please plug in the keyboard?"
And that was the end of it.
Well, the verbal end of it.
He, Eric, Mike, and sometimes Sam would play some generic techno shit, the occasional cover song, and even string together a couple of theme songs into a nerdy medley that had people flailing about having "all the feels" and wailing about how they "just can't." But all through that, Sam kept shooting worried looks and peering over the heads of the crowd to check if Puck was still upright. Mike was his less-obvious ninja bodyguard, but subtle or not, it was a pain.
It was around 9:30pm when Wonder Woman, Lady Sif, an eight-year old Katniss Everdeen, and a very female Sam Winchester tugged him out of his store to sit at one of the tables at Sam's with his guitar and tried to use him as a human jukebox.
"Look at you," Sam teased, handing him a steaming mug. "A modern-day Orpheus if I've ever seen one."
Puck frowned, accepting the mug and setting it down on the table. "I'm not wearing an inch of leather, dude."
"Orpheus! Not Morpheus! And even then, Morpheus is the god of—you know what? Forget it." He shook his head in disgust and walked away, muttering something about uncultured swine.
Puck just grinned and took a sip of his tea.
It was this unspoken thing between him, Sam, and Mike: tea. If there'd been one worthwhile thing they took from glee club, it was the importance of tea. (And making sure to keep their kids very, very far from show choir.) Now every time Puck and/or Sam and/or Mike spent inordinate amounts of time jamming or performing or whatever, one of them would make tea with honey.
So it was with the very first sip of honeyed tea that something warm settled into Puck's chest. No, nitwits, he knew he was drinking something hot and how it would feel like going down his throat, and that wasn't it.
It wasn't like a full-on episode—not like the ones he had before. It was more like a daydream than anything else. He could still see Sam, the costumed customers, and even a troll that was trying to flirt with Mike, but he wasn't really focused on them, wasn't really seeing them. Instead, he was seeing something else in his mind.
Rachel Berry stood frozen in the middle of what looked to be the living room of her apartment, holding a phone up to her ear. Warm and bright colors were all over the place: oranges, yellows, greens, creams, and maple wood—all classy and still girly and very Rachel Berry. Barefoot with tiny red shorts and an oversize shirt that hung off one shoulder—still very Rachel Berry. What wasn't quite so Rachel Berry was the random Asian baby sitting on her hip and grinning up at her.
Klaine baby—AJ.
"Y-Yes, I'm sorry. I'm still here," she choked out, blinking like she was on drugs. The baby gurgled and giggled at her, and then her face split into the biggest grin he'd seen in such a long time. "I—yes, I understand. Of course. Of course. Of course, Yes, of course. I-I-I'm…still standing, thank goodness." She laughed and glanced down at the baby, making a funny face. "I'm holding my best friends' baby right now, so I definitely have to be upright."
This wasn't a memory. It wasn't a fantasy or a hallucination-induced-by-prolonged-singing either 'cause if it was, the baby in Rachel's arms would be his. No matter how cute the little nub was, if this was a product of his imagination, AJ would definitely be less Asian and would have a Mohawk.
"I promise I'm all right. Yes. Yes, thank you so much! I'm—I'm over the moon! Yes, thank you so much again! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"
She hung up, calmly set the phone on the countertop, and then playfully tapped AJ's nose and poked him right in the chest—in the middle of his blue and red onesie that said "Daddies' Little Crooner."
"Did you hear that, Andy?" she cooed, bouncing him slightly. "Huh, AJ?"
AJ.
Hadn't they talked about this last—
Holy…
Was this…
"Guess what Auntie Rachel's manager just told her? Can you guess, sweetheart? Huh? Your Auntie Rachel is going to play Belle in Beauty and the Beast!" she squealed happily, whirling around into a complicated-looking leap/dance step and segueing into a waltz. "Wait 'til I tell your daddies! Kurt's going to faint and then demand that I rehearse lines with him as soon as possible, and Blaine is going to try and yank me into a dance that spans the floor and the furniture."
Either this was some sort of premonition or vision or—
"And Uncle Noah! Let's not forget Uncle Noah!"
Uncle Noah in question nearly had a heart attack. Could one have a heart attack in a dreamscape/whatever-the-fuck-this-was?
"He's going to curse and then say something simultaneously crude and complimenting and then incessantly flirt until I inevitably threaten to hang up to which he will respond by somehow making me laugh or diffusing the situation and then changing the subject and…"
She sighed, stopped waltzing, grinned, laughed, and then twirled around the living room, spinning until AJ squealed.
"I'm fairly sure he's going to call soon too," she said between humming a few bars of a familiar song. "Oh, this is the night, it's a beautiful night, and they call it bella notte."
Goddamn, could Broadway's new Belle sing. Back in high school, Rachel sang with the emotion of her character. Now… Jesus. He was listening to an actual angel—one he distinctly remembered hearing before but then lost sometime around her Broadway immersion when she was twelve and the change in the tones of her voice. It was clean, sweet, and bell-like now. It wasn't shrill or so high that his eye would twitch. It was soft but still powerful and emotional enough to have earned and kept her spot on Broadway. Evi-fucking-dently since she scored Belle!
"Look at the skies, they have stars in their eyes, and we call it bella notte. Side by side with your loved one, you'll find enchantment here…"
She paused with a scrunched expression, and the baby laughed. If Puck had been aware enough to do it, his jaw would've dropped. Rachel Berry forgot the lyrics. She stood there for a good minute or so and just stared off, trying to remember how the song went. Then she gave up.
"Da-da da da da-da-da-da, da-da-da da da da-da, oh, this is the night, my lyrics are not right..." And she grinned again as she whirled around gracefully, her hair flying around. "On this lovely bella notte."
Puck blinked and focused back on Mike, who—now that Puck was firmly back in reality after straddling delusion and real-time—was trying his best to sidle away from the lady-troll that was progressively getting more possessive with every move Mike made.
It was almost ten—totally understandable that these weirdos were getting loopier. It was past their curfews to be out in public; it was time to retreat to the Internet.
Besides…the longer he was with them, the more they were starting to rub off on him. He was seriously inclined to start playing "Carry On My Wayward Son" as a goodbye to get them out the door. A bunch of them were actually already congregated around the Turd with Sam and saying their final goodbyes and thanks for hosting the event.
Turd.
That didn't sound right.
Tard.
Tar—Tardis.
Yeah, he'd been corrected enough times that night already. Shut up.
Since no one was really paying much attention to him anymore, he snuck back to his store with his guitar, his tea, and what was left of his balls, 'cause damn it to hell if those Harry Potter fanvids didn't have him tearing up and pining for his childhood of chopstick-wands. Mike also seized the opportunity to ninja away from the troll under the guise of helping Puck pack up the instruments so they could both get out quick. They said their goodbyes to Captain Trouty before heading back to their apartments—one to the safety of a no-troll-zone and the other to a phone call that was quickly becoming a nighttime ritual.
He had his phone out as he tossed his keys into the bowl and had her number dialed as he peeled off his jacket and chucked it into his room. He spent the three rings it took for her to answer the phone sprawled out on his couch again.
"Hello, Noah," she said warmly.
He smiled. "Evening, Berry." He was gonna have to ease into this with some finesse. He couldn't just flat-out ask her if he was having premonitions of her or something. "So whatcha doin'?" There. That was cool and suave enough, right?
"You mean you're not going to ask me what I'm wearing?" she teased. "Or what color underwear I have on?"
Puck scoffed. "Purple."
"There was a long, awkward silence as Puck tried to project his smug smirk through the phone. "How did you know that?"
"I got GPS, baby—Genital Positioning System."
"How you manage to function in polite society, Noah Puckerman, is absolutely beyond me."
"I'm a stud—a charming, witty stud. I can be just as stiff too, if you know what I mean."
She huffed. "Can't we maintain a certain amount of decency?" She sounded like a pare—wait. "There is a baby in the vicinity, after all. I'm watching Andy for the night."
He swallowed what felt like a wood chip but still managed to sound relatively normal. "Whatever. He's like, one. AJ doesn't get cuss words let alone dirty jokes. You can't use Klaine baby as an excuse for a few more years. Besides, I'm pretty sure he'd be in bed by now. Or are you such a shitty babysitter that you'd let the kid stay up all night?"
"Anyway," she said bracingly, obviously either trying to keep herself from yelling at him or laughing her adorable ass off. "I have news!"
"Is that the news?"
"Noah!"
"You don't gotta practice calling my name, baby. It comes out naturally in the throes of ecstasy," he said. "So what's up?" Here we go. "Did you, like, tame a beast or something? I mean, you went out with a T-Rex, so I guess that counts, right?"
She paused for a few seconds, and Puck winced, hoping it didn't hit too close for her to start thinking he was psychic or something. And then she finally spoke in her typical matter-of-fact tone, and his panic subsided. "I did not tame anything, thank you very much. Finn wasn't a beast, as…tall and sturdy as he might have been," she said. "If you think about it, the beast I actually tamed was you."
He could actually feel his internal organs spasm. Was that weird? Was he exhibiting signs of some serious disease or something?
"I made you sing that solo, influenced your decision to choose glee over football—to be honest, Noah, I think you really mellowed out after you and I dated. Sure, you still had your… issues to work through, especially your stint in juvie, but for all intents and purposes, you were significantly nicer to us gleeks and even stopped throwing slushies into people's faces. You still took extreme pride and enjoyment in antagonizing Jacob Ben-Israel—"
"Holy shitballs! Jewfro!" Puck squawked. "You know he's got this gossip blog now? But he's running legit—him and his minions shockingly post the truth and not the horseshit those other ones usually throw out."
"Yes, I know. I still happen to be the primary subject," she said blandly. "Out of everything else I've said, that's all you registered? Jacob?"
Puck took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Berry—"
He could hear her shifting around uncomfortably and then: "Oh, I know, I'm sorry. I-It was just an observation."
Puck rolled his eyes. He was getting better at reading her from over the phone. He could mentally see her backing away, eyes dropping to the floor like some wounded rabbit.
"Rachel, shut up," he said in one breath before she could cut him off again. "You're right, okay? In a way, yeah, I guess, but you were only part of the reason, so don't take all the credit, diva. Blame some of it on glee club itself, all right?"
"Okay," she said meekly.
"So," he said. "What was that news you wanted to tell me?"
"You were partially correct," she said, trying build up the anticipation before blurting out: "I'm the new Belle!"
"On Broadway?" He feigned ignorance but then warmed into genuine pride. "That's kickass, baby! Congratulations!" See? He didn't always insert innuendo into things.
"I genuinely thought I wouldn't get the part because Edmund Mason, the director, pulled me aside and voiced all his qualms about how I could portray the character, but in the end, he said that I had an effervescent manner that would certainly stay true to the original portrayal of the movie and to Belle's character herself. He said there was something about the two of us that clicked so well, which was why he originally pulled me aside instead of simply turning me down."
"I don't know why you gotta sound so surprised," Puck said. "You were just comparing yourself to Belle, like, two minutes ago."
"No, I was putting our relationship in comparison with that of a woman taming a beast."
"Did you not see Beauty and the Beast? Or read any of the fairy tales or even your own script?" He chortled and stood up, moving toward his fridge. Those paninis in Sam's store were delicious and everything, but he needed his pie.
She changed the subject again. "So I'm starting rehearsals in a few days. My debut performance won't actually be for another few wee—Noah, what are you humming?"
He pulled a whole new package of pie out of the fridge—pumpkin this time—and set it on the bar. "What?"
"You're humming."
"I'm not allowed to do that anymore? Pie makes me happy. I have pie in front of me. I am gonna fucking hum as I prep my pie for consumption 'cause it is turning out to be an actual bella notte, don't you think, Berry?"
There was nothing but silence on the other end of the phone. Puck grinned as he lifted the lid of the pie box and dug in, singing through a mouthful of cold, delicious pie. "Side by side with your loved one, you'll find enchantment here. The night will weave its magic spell when the one you love is near. Oh, this is the night, and the heavens are right, on this lovely bella notte."
"—and so I told him that even if he sprouted a pair of wings and flew me off the balcony of Cinderella's Castle into a moonlit, airborne waltz, there would be no way I'd go out with him," Nathalie said, twirling another forkful of fettuccini.
Puck blinked, having only heard "wings" and "waltz" and decided it wasn't worth hearing all over again. "That's awesome," he said instead. He wished he hadn't finished his food so early. That way he could've used the excuse of not talking while one's mouth was full to escape conversation.
He was gonna kill Evans for this.
Skewer him with a pole and roast him over a spitfire. And then feed his rotisserie carcass to some cannibals. He was a handsome, charitable son of a bitch, okay?
"Right? It was because I totally had this dream of this angel who did dance me off a balcony of a castle. It was so romantic," Nathalie—now he was really starting to rethink that, 'cause he wasn't sure if her name was actually Nathalie anymore. It might be Natasha. "I would totally get into genetic splicing because the feeling of being in the air was amazing."
He took a sip of his drink—Mountain Dew, 'cause only sugar had the capability to make his brain buzz enough to make the woman in front of him blur into inconsequentiality—and thought that he could totally be of service to her fantasies if he threw her out the window.
That would be one majestic way to end the night.
He was so goddamn bored out of his mind.
He could listen to Rachel babble about the most inane things and still retain some semblance of understanding, but every time this chick opened her mouth, he wanted to stuff his entire plate into it.
It wasn't that her voice was annoying.
It wasn't that she talked about the most unbelievable shit under the moon.
It wasn't that she had never even asked him how he was doing or how his food was or if he wanted to kill himself sometime within the next five minutes.
She was just so fucking absorbed in her own existence that he was pretty sure he could hold a mirror in front of himself and she'd start sighing and smiling dreamily at her own reflection.
Maybe her name was Narcissa.
That would make a hell of a lot of sense.
"And the dance itself was just mindblowing. I mean, we were twirling around like Dancing With the Stars—literally! Remember that show? I was planning to audition to be one of the professional dancers, but…"
He nodded, probably looking too interested, and took another long pull of his drink. But instead of something cool sliding down, something warm flooded his chest again, and his already-fuzzy focus on the woman in front of him faded into the background as unmistakable humming thrummed in his mind.
There she was again, standing her living room, waltzing around with a very familiar flannel shirt. A shirt that he distinctly remembered her taking, offering to wash it 'cause she had her special detergent to really get out slushie stains.
Crazy girl had kept it all this goddamn time.
Rachel held the end of one long sleeve, and her other gripped the shoulder as she and the dress twirled and step-ball-changed around her living room. She was smiling, her eyes at half-mast, and it tugged on his chest, the way she hummed what he'd long-since deemed their song—"Sweet Caroline."
It was a hell of a lot shorter than any other vision/dreamscape/whatever he'd had, but damn if it didn't say just as much as any of those other ones.
Narcissa/Nadine/whatever-the-fuck-her-name-was could have her creepy-ass dancing angel; Puck wanted his Belle. He suddenly had the desperate need to get home.
Jumping out of nowhere, Puck began to frantically fumble for the phone in his pocket.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Narcissa/Nathalie asked, looking more offended than worried.
He held up his phone, tapping the screen and pretending to read something. His screen was nice and blank. "I gotta go!" he said. "M-Mike's in the hospital! He slipped and smashed into one of those gigantic-ass mirrors!"
"Sir—sir, are you all right?" One of the waiters rushed up worriedly.
"I gotta go," Puck cried, shooting up from his seat and wishing someone from the Oscars or Academy Awards panels could see this performance 'cause this was gold. "I gotta go!"
And he bolted out of the restaurant, leaving Narcissa/Nathalie with the bill and her own company. He sprinted to his car, threw himself inside, and peeled out of the parking space, laughing his ass off all the way back to his apartment.
The regimen was pretty much the same as the other night. He had Rachel's phone number dialed as soon as he walked through the door. Two hours into the phone call, Puck and Rachel were pretty much settled into bed, though definitely not the way he would've wished them to be.
Obviously.
He'd already bitched about his shitty-ass date, she'd told him she would have a few choice words with Sam about his ability to decide who his friends would be compatible with, and they'd just finished arguing about the effectiveness of vegan chocolate to soak up drama. (Yeah, only with Rachel Berry would he ever engage in that kind of conversation.)
Now, they were reaching that point in the night in which their conversations would start getting arbitrary, metaphorical, and generally way too…much for two people who hadn't seen each other in almost a decade.
"Noah?"
"Hm?"
"Do you remember that squirrel?"
He paused, rubbing his chest and crossing one leg over the other. "Squirrel?"
"The squirrel you saved me from when we were little—the one who stole my carnation hair clip before you whacked him off my head with a tree branch?"
"For God's sake, Rach, we were five-years old. How do you remember that stuff?" he laughed.
"I don't know," she said softly. "It was just…extremely memorable to me." She was quiet for a few seconds, and Puck wasn't sure what to read from that. "But I figured you wouldn't remember. It was a long time ago."
Puck rolled over and smushed his face into his pillow. Then he lifted his head and said, "It was from a bush, not a tree."
"Do you ever wonder what it would've been like if we hadn't been in love with other people when you and I went out?"
"Jesus Christ, Rachel, don't beat around the bush or anything."
"Answer me."
"No."
"W-What?"
Puck groaned and wished he was more inclined to get up 'cause he couldn't have this conversation without at least 15% alcohol in his system.
"I would'a screwed it up, Berry," he sighed. "I didn't really start growing up until, like, senior year—when the shit in my life really started unraveling, you know?"
"Yeah, I remember."
"If you and I had been legit, I would'a wound up hurting you somehow."
"I don't think so." She didn't even hesitate.
He scowled. "Bullshit."
"You said we were never friends when we broke up, but looking back on it now, you were more my friend during certain times than other people were. You stood up for me when Santana said everyone just pretended to like me. You helped me and Daddy with the melody for 'Get It Right.' You and Kurt staged that Barbravention. You helped me with 'Need You Now,' no questions asked and no reciprocation necessary. You mimed that heart to me and said you all loved me—"
Puck bolted upright. "Wait, what? How do you remember that?!"
"At the time, I was too busy drowning in my tears, but I had nightmares of that day for a long while because of Finn. I remember almost every detail of you all waving goodbye because I replayed it night after night when I first arrived here. I remember yours best of all because you were the only one to do that. And it made me laugh."
"You laugh in your nightmares?"
"No, you doughnut!" she barked, laughing and making him warm all over again. "I laughed after I woke up in a cold sweat with tears in my eyes because Finn dropped me off at a train station instead of waiting for me at an altar."
"I don't know if you're being sarcastic anymore."
She sighed, but he could still hear the smile in her voice. "Oh, Noah."
"Now, moan that, and this phone call's gonna get real interesting, baby."
"Noah!"
"Keep it coming, Berry."
Puck dropped from the bar, keeping his breathing deep and even. He'd stopped at 75 to peel off his sweat-soaked shirt and then jumped back up into the other half of his chin-ups. He could feel a bunch of girls' eyes on him—including a few guys too—but he steadfastly ignored them. Then he flipped, hooking his legs around the bar and dropping his hands so he was doing sit-ups.
There was only one person he wanted to impress, and the crazy girl was roughly 792 miles away. Roughly. 'Cause he didn't look it up or anything.
No.
He had more of a life than that. He lived in his city; she lived in her own. He was exercising; she was doing… whatever it was she did during the day.
He drop-flipped back onto the ground, nearly denting his water bottle as he furiously took a drink. Could you furiously take a drink?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Either way, the adverb was pretty accurate.
He was furious.
You know why he was furious?
'Cause when you wake up to some weird-ass hallucination/vision of the present/premonition/what-the-fuck-ever-he-was-going-fucking-bonkers of the object of your affections having coffee with her ex-boyfriend in Starbucks—complete with cheek kisses, affectionate hand-holding, and remembering each other's goddamn coffee orders—especially after staying up pretty late the night before talking about deep, unspeakable things, you'd be fucking furious too.
Okay, yeah, they weren't, like, making out or even kissing each other's lips or dropping I-love-you's, but still! She sat in that Starbucks, at some teensy little table that would make every claustrophobic run screaming in terror, with Brody.
That pansy-ass pretty boy.
Puck thought he was gay! What the hell were they doing back together?
Not that they ever explicitly said they were back together or gave any sort of indication that they were dating again. They just sort of…sat there and drank their goddamn coffee, laughing and shit and being all chipper at that unholy hour of the morning.
That's why Puck had gone to the gym. He needed to exercise.
And not in the good way either, 'cause ever since he started talking to Rachel again, every girl he saw was just… a painting, something to be admired but nothing more. No one else was real for him.
He winced when he officially dented his bottle.
Listen to him! He sounded like a moron!
He chugged half the bottle and tossed it back onto the floor before slumping onto the leg press machine. He wished he could leg press the weights into Brody's face, that dipshit.
It was a testament to his anger that he wasn't even thinking about how fucking psychotic he'd gotten in the last month. He was having these visions without even blinking twice anymore, and up until that morning, he'd been flipping his shit wondering what in the ever-fuckering hell was going on with his jacked-up brain.
Puck spent another few minutes just fuming to himself, going through the different machines and generally looking like he wanted to break something or have something break him. It was enough to make some of the employees a little worried but not worried enough to approach him in fear of being used in either scheme of breakage. One employee though—a young kid who doubled as an advertiser for some sort of energy smoothie—wasn't as smart as the others.
He loped over, the ignorant fool, and stopped in front of Puck.
"Afternoon, sir!" the employee said. Puck glared at him so hard that the poor kid immediately paled and started shaking. "I-I-I, uh, w-was won-wondering i-i-i-i-if you—would y-you like—smoothie?!"
The glass tumbler of purple smoothie was shoved under Puck's nose, shaking so hard it looked like it was about to spill.
Out of sheer fear of being doused by a smoothie, Puck grabbed the tumbler and glared at the kid, who looked like he was half a second from either pissing his pants or passing out. Either option wasn't gonna be pretty, so Puck rolled his eyes and took a sip. His first thought was that he was being poisoned; his next thought was the warmth in his chest again.
"Hi, Rach!"
Puck watched Finn's face appear on Rachel's phone as she sat on her couch and felt like throwing up for so many different reasons.
"Finn! How are you? How is Canada?"
Okay, now he was a lot less nauseous. Canada. Canada is far enough away, right?
"It's good—still freezing, but really great. It'd be better if you were here, though," Finn said. "I miss you."
And now he was nauseous all over again.
"Oh, I miss everyone too." Something inside Puck did the Soulja Boy when he heard the pointed emphasis on "everyone." Maybe there was hope after all. "Remember when Mercedes literally busted all the windows of Kurt's car?" She laughed, rested her chin in her palm and setting her elbow on the desk. "AJ still can't get your name right, by the way."
Puck smirked. He'd totally rubbed off on her. She was calling her precious Andrew "AJ."
Finn grimaced. "He's still calling me 'Pinn' then?"
"And very happily too," Rachel said with a grin. "So why did you need to talk to me?"
Finn blushed and sheepishly started to rub his neck. "Listen, I'm, uh, coming back down into the States to visit Burt and Mom and you, Kurt, Blaine, and Andy for two weeks, and I just… wanted to see if you were still open to things."
Rachel frowned. "Open? What do you—" Her expression froze in place. "Finn—"
Puck's eye twitched and he was vaguely aware that Smoothie Kid was slowly backing away, scared shitless by the seemingly random expressions crossing Puck's face, but more especially by the enraged look he must've been wearing.
"Rach, let's just...hang out," Finn said, staring at her earnestly through the screen. "We'll have dinner at Sardi's—remember?—and then take a walk through Central Park, and if things work out, we could give it another try. What do you think?"
Puck watched Rachel shift uncomfortably. Her attempt to give Finn a kind smile wound up only making a painful grimace.
"Finn…" She sighed and started to fiddle with the hem of her shirt with her free hand. "That sounds...incredibly nice—a literal walk down memory lane—but I...I'm..."
Puck stared at her, a building pressure in his chest. Say it, baby, he thought. Say it.
"I'm spoken for already."
And in that moment, Puck would've happily finished that entire smoothie and bought everyone in the gym one. But of course he wouldn't do that. He was daydreaming, not stupid.
"Oh," Finn said. "Th-That's cool. I should've asked first, shouldn't I? I just read on Jacob's blog that you were still—well, now I feel stupid."
Rachel immediately looked sympathetic. "No, F-Finn, no, it's not your fault. It wouldn't be on Jacob's blog because we...we're not public. Technically, we're not even officially dating, but we're...we're almost there. I really, really like him, and I feel like we're both in the right place to try it again. Only not literally in the right place because he may or may not be nearly a thousand miles away and we've only been talking on the phone every night—" She cleared her throat. "It'd be nice to just hang out again...as friends, you know?"
Finn nodded, looking like a beat-up puppy who was still somehow high on laughing gas. For all his fuck-ups, at least he'd grown up enough to be able to genuinely smile at Rachel. "Yeah, I think that'd be good. Besides, we're probably much farther away than you and your boyfriend, so picking back up would be a bad idea anyway."
Rachel nodded. "Yeah. Maybe he can come visit, and you two can meet. I'm sure you'll get along really well."
Crazy girl.
Puck blinked and focused back on the Smoothie Kid, who was standing in front of him with a hopeful grin. It was only then that Puck realized how widely he was smiling too.
"So you liked it?" Smoothie Kid asked.
Puck stood up and handed the tumbler back. "Hell no, that was some nasty-ass shit." He stood up and headed toward the lockers.
"B-But then why are you smiling?" Smoothie Kid asked, trailing after him and staring down at the tumbler in confusion.
Puck stopped and faced him. "You should be happy I didn't punch you for trying to poison me. Don't make me drop-kick you for being nosy. I gotta go home and throw up now. Fix your shitty-ass recipe and come see me again next week." Then Puck ruffled his over-gelled hair and walked off with a smile.
'Cause apparently he had an unofficial girlfriend. He was unofficially "dating" Rachel Berry.
Rachel Berry.
He grinned.
Schmoozing California boy or not, maybe Tom really did know what he was doing. Puck was gonna have to make some calls.
"You don't like it?"
Puck smirked 'cause it was so obvious she was trying to keep her cool. She'd spent the last fifteen minutes of their nightly phone call detailing how she fell in love with her favorite show—some dark drama he stopped watching three years ago—and why she continued to love it. As soon as Puck said he didn't care for it, he expected her to blow up and tear up his ass in the most verbose way possible. But she didn't. She was learning.
"Nah," he said. "I mean, it was good in the beginning and stuff, but after, like, the second half of the first season, it got real stupid real quick."
"Stu—how did it become stupid?!" But there was only so much Rachel Berry could take in one night. He'd predicted her underwear again (pink), made the dirtiest joke about cabinets (oh, yes, cabinets—she'd never understand his thinking processes even in a thousand years), made her worry about her veganism if she got carnivorous pregnancy cravings, and had her on the verge of tears when she demanded he sing her the song he was working on. Her emotions had been all over the place already, but he was always there to smooth her—it, smooth it—out afterward.
"Like, you get invested in the characters, right? You care about 'em," Puck attempted to explain carefully. "And then the writers keep throwin' 'em in crappy situations to the point of unbelievability."
"But you have to remember they need to create tension in the story line to keep it moving. In order to have tension, there needs to be conflict. Would you like to watch a show where everyone's happy all the time, just hanging out a-a-and smoking weed or something?"
"That 70's Show ran for almost a decade."
"But there was conflict! The relationships between the group kept the show going."
"That's no excuse for having Jackie end up with Fez, Berry. You can't save yourself from this. There's a point where TV writers get desperate, and that's when the story goes downhill. Point of no return, baby."
"So what are you saying?"
"All shows need to end at some point. Very few can go on for more than five seasons and still be quality enough to air. Look at fuckin' Supernatural! Fourth and fifth season, they had the goddamn Apocalypse—literally. There is no going back after the Apocalypse. The whole angel civil war and the leviathan and shit got really annoying, and then after the eighth season with all those godforsaken flashbacks and weird shots, I just stopped watching."
"But there were legions of fans who were just as devoted to the show in the later seasons as there were in the earlier ones," she said. "You wanted the writers to just end the show even though they were still getting good viewership and let down their fans?"
"The writers have a responsibility to the fans, but they also have their responsibility to the characters and to the story they started, you know what I mean? Remember that one show, uh, How I Met Your Mother? How many seasons did it take before Ted finally revealed how he fucking met his kids' mother? He took so many fucking years of their lives to tell them. Jesus."
"But the show was still going strong, and the fans were happy. They want to be able to stick with a story for as long as possible because they don't want to let go of their favorite characters. It's like having neighbors become great friends and then they move away. It's horrible."
"But the responsibility to the story ties into the responsibility to the fans 'cause it gets to the point where suspension of belief becomes really fucking insulting."
"This is entertainment, Noah!"
"It's irresponsible, Rachel!" He groaned, completely disgusted that he even knew what he was talking about let alone having the conversation with someone. Those crazy-ass cosplayers and fangirls were like a disease. "Just 'cause people want junk food doesn't mean it's a good thing that needs to keep happening, you know!"
"Where is all this coming from?!"
"Sam!" When in doubt, blame Sam. "He's the one with the smart-ass anthropology and English degrees! But that's beside the point! Some shows just need to end with some dignity. Remember Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? That show was the shit, and it ended on a high point. The whole cancelling-shows-only-when-the-viewership-is-down is stupid."
"It's economics!"
"It's irresponsible!"
"This coming from you of all people!"
"I own a business!"
"You co-own!"
"I started it and offered Tom the position, Berry! Stop underestimating! Didn't I say I had star potential?!"
Her voice dropped back down into normal decibels. Normal, worried decibels. "Did you have an espresso again? You don't normally talk this much."
"You're rubbing off on me in all the wrong ways, Berry."
"Well, we don't have much of a choice in how we rub together, do we?" Then she gasped like she just realized what she said.
Puck froze. "Yeah, we're totally rubbing off on each other."
Instead of huffing indignantly or sighing in defeat, she laughed, and he smiled, listening to her. When she finally stopped and they lapsed into silence, she hummed something he wasn't familiar with and randomly dropped a question that had him choking on his spit.
"Noah, was this a date?"
"What?!" he spluttered.
"Well, we came home, had dinner, watched a movie on TV, and now we're relaxing together," she said contemplatively, completely nonchalant about what she just said. "I think this technically constitutes as a date."
Puck sat up and rested his elbows on his knees and told her the truth. "Rachel, it's not a date unless the night ends with me kissing you. This is us really us up our minutes to degrees we've never gone before."
"Don't you think it's more than that? I mean, we talk every night about things that I don't even talk about with Kurt and Blaine. Is…all this just me? Am I being presumptuous?"
"No. You're right on track."
"So what now?"
"I don't know."
The previous strategy of always blaming Sam didn't come out of nowhere, you know. There was legitimate basis for it.
Take right now, for instance. The giant raging headache Puck was dealing with was totally and completely Sam's fault. If you wanna get technical, it was because of this chick Zoey, but this was all Sam's idea, so indirectly, it was all Sam's fault.
Evans had the brilliant idea of going to a goddamn carnival—him, Puck, and Mike. Only it wasn't, like, some fun bro-outing where they could pick up girls or something. No. Sam set up dates. He was with Melanie, Mike was with Janet, and Puck was unfortunately hitched to Zoey.
It was torture.
It was a beautiful day, cool and sunny. There weren't too many people running around, there was a lot of really cool shit happening, and food was good.
But it was torture.
"Sam, we're gonna go over by the bracelet booth, 'kay?" Melanie said, finally releasing her death grip around Sam's arm.
"Ooh! Charms!" Janet squealed excitedly, skipping ahead.
"I wonder if they have any black beads," Zoey said pointedly, throwing a sultry look over at Puck—as if he was supposed to know why black beads were so significant—before sashaying away. But the sway of her ass did nothing but remind him of a horse.
As soon as the three girls were sucked in by the beads, Puck grabbed a fistful of Sam's shirt. His glare could be seen even through his dark, mirrored aviators. "Trouty Mouth, if Zoey claws my ass one more time, I am gonna give you a swirly in an oil vat at one of the funnel cake booths."
"Come on, Puck," Sam said as he deftly ninja'ed his way out of Puck's grasp. "You've been borderline psychotic for the last three weeks, and all of a sudden you dropped this news on us about moving. Can you blame me for wanting to make your last couple of weeks in Chicago fun?"
Puck rolled his eyes. "Do I look like I need help having fun?"
Mike didn't even blink. "Yes."
Puck glared at the both of them as Sam broke out into chuckles. "You two are assholes."
"And you're unstable," Mike said.
Puck groaned loudly. "Can y'all stop with that?! I am fine now!"
"Screw this," Sam said, suddenly latching his hand onto Puck's shoulder and steering him toward a small, purple-colored tent. "If you're not telling us what kind of brain damage you have, we're gonna have to find out through different methods."
Puck balked at the sign next to the tent as he stumbled along between Sam and Mike, who'd quickly caught onto Sam's idea. "A fortune teller?! Evans, I thought you were Christian!"
"Sometimes fortune tellers are perceptive enough to pick up on psychological problems through a person's gestures or small nuances in their speech or body language," Sam said. "We can go from her generalizations."
Oh, shit.
He really needed to stop forgetting Sam had a degree and was legitimately smart and not as moronic as he acted sometimes.
Sam and Mike dragged him all the way into the tent, threw some money at a magenta-cloth-swathed Madame Cecilia (a forty-something lady whose skin could be used for making wallets and purses), and slammed Puck down onto the chair at the small, round table with a crystal ball in the middle, right smack in front of Cecilia.
"Hello, boys," she greeted them in a clean American accent.
"Bye, ma'am," Puck said flatly, lurching out of the chair. He was immediately forced back and held down by two pairs of arms. "Okay, throw whatever you got at me. The sooner we're done, the sooner I fry some faces."
"Please," Sam said politely, squeezing Puck's shoulder. "Take your time, ma'am."
She eyed Sam and Mike, standing on either side of Puck like a pair of guards, before dropping her eyes down to Puck. "Sunglasses off, young man."
He pulled them off and set them down on the table, slumping back against the seat with the most disdainful expression he could make—a face he reserved for Finn's shitty-ass pep talks and haters.
She rested a wrinkly hand on her fake-ass crystal ball, but continued to look straight at Puck. It was actually… really creepy.
"You're in love," she said simply. Then she looked down at her crystal ball as Puck, Sam, and Mike gaped at her. She wiped her thumb on the surface, rubbing off a smudge.
Mike burst out laughing. "In love?! This idiot?! He doesn't look even remotely close to being in love—he doesn't even have a friend with benefits, let alone a girlfriend!"
Cecilia cocked an eyebrow at Mike and fixed that black-eyed stare on Puck again. Something tickled at the base of his skull and leaned away from her even further. After everything he'd been through in the last few weeks, he wasn't about to take this horseshit lightly anymore.
She wasn't like those other stereotypical fortune tellers who dropped some ohm's and made the table rattle. From the way she just stared at him, with her perfect posture and small, knowing smile, Puck was really believing his previous notion that someone up yonder was meddling with his life in some pretty obvious ways.
"I like her earrings," Cecilia said. "The daisies are very well-made."
Puck nearly threw up on the spot.
When Rachel was eight-years old, she got a jewelry-making kit. They would fill small wires with even smaller beads and then twist them into shapes before hooking them into earrings, necklaces, or rings. It was a small arts-and-crafts sort of thing. But it was a thing that Rachel had hooked him into doing one afternoon at JCC, so he made daisy earrings for Nana Connie. Crazy lady wore those things all the way to her grave.
"You can't understand her right now," Cecilia continued, like she was having a conversation about coffee or something, "but you'll both get the message soon enough. You'll figure it out. You're halfway through forty days, Noah."
He threw up as soon as he got home. He'd bolted from the tent like a demon outta heaven and tore through the crowds, thanking God, Jesus, Moses, and Methuselah that he brought his car. His was the most badass frantic exit in the history of panic attacks. It was a miracle that he'd made it from the carnival to his apartment 'cause during that entire car trip, he couldn't remember squat. The only thing he thought about was not throwing up on his steering wheel.
After spending a good half an hour in the bathroom resurrecting his lunch, he gargled mouthwash, popped some sleeping pills, staggered back to his bedroom, and passed the fuck out. No way was he staying conscious long enough to even consider the fact that he truly was in an episode of Supernatural.
Well, it turns out sleeping was not the best idea.
Shocking, right?
Of course not.
"Noah," Nana Connie called softly. "Noah."
Puck opened his eyes to see he was back at home—in Lima. He stood in the small hallway between the living room and the kitchen, pictures of his small family on either side of the hall. His and Bekah's baby pictures, Ma when she was younger, the three of them in the living room, Poppa Jerry and Nana Connie, and even one of Puck, Bekah, and Jake at Jake's graduation.
Puck followed the pictures all the way to the kitchen where Nana Connie stood at the dining table, arranging a bunch of flowers into a vase. That obscenely domestic scene wasn't what had Puck gawping all around him, though. Every available surface of the kitchen—countertop, stove, open cupboards, open dishwasher, oven, sink, chair, and even microwave—was covered in flowers. Roses, gardenias, petunias, tulips, lavender—he was being smothered by plants. They were gonna go all zombified on him, and shit was gonna hit the fa—
"Noah, bubbala," Nana called again, waving him over.
He tentatively shuffled over and then straightened when she glared at him. He stood up straight and strode over, bending down to kiss her cheek out of pure habit.
"Hi, Nana," he said softly, smiling as she patted his cheek.
"Shalom, Noah. Bo He'na," she said slowly, pronouncing the syllables and gesturing so he could understand. She waved him closer and tugged him so that he stood beside her.
Compared to the rest of the kitchen, the dining table wasn't nearly as covered with flowers. Only four different species in varying shades of white, pink, and purple were laid out in front of him in bunches.
Nana waved around at all the flowers around them and said one word, clearly enunciated so that he couldn't mishear it: "Bashert."
He frowned, the word sounding familiar. He was pretty sure it was the "asher" he'd heard her say the last time she...appeared to him, but he'd heard it before. Heard the term used but definitely not with flowers or anything.
She snapped her fingers, getting his attention again. She sighed at his lost expression and then patted the four bunches of flowers on the table. "Zvug."
Okay, that was fairly close to the "boog" he heard, but definitely not as familiar as the other word.
"N-Nana, you're not ringing any bells here," he said sadly. "They're all pretty and stuff, but whatever message you're sending isn't getting through."
She took one of each flower, tied them with a purple ribbon she pulled from her pocket, and then handed it to him. "Samuel. Michael."
He blinked at the small bundle. The fuck? "You want me to give that to Sam and Mike? Nana—"
"Betachbi," she said, resting her hand over his heart and then moving it over hers.
And that was how Puck woke up—confused, infuriated, and shocked as all hell that Sam and Mike managed to get into his apartment and wake him up.
"You," Sam growled, "have so much to explain right now."
Puck closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed himself up into a sitting position. "Well, then somebody make me dinner and get me pie and coffee 'cause we're gonna be here for a while."
And so they ordered take-out.
By the time Puck was finished telling them about his dreams, hallucinations, daydreams, and visions, he'd cleared through a full meal of steak, steamed vegetables, and roasted red potatoes and was already on his third slice of pie. Meanwhile, Mike was slumped in his chair with his forehead resting in one hand and a third glass of whiskey in the other. Sam, on the other hand, was pouting with his arms crossed, deep in thought.
"...and then y'all woke me up," Puck concluded, shoving a forkful of pie as added emphasis.
"You sure you've never heard of basherts and zvugs, Puck?" Sam asked. "I mean, I know your mom, and I would've thought those two things were...deeply ingrained into your vernacular."
Puck set his fork on his plate, and Mike lifted his head.
"The hell you talkin' about, Evans?"
Samuel Evans had been, still was, and always will be deeply passionate about James Cameron's Avatar. He liked it for the characters, for the animation, and for the intricate world that was built for the movie. That deep appreciation led him to delve into the story of culture clashes. Granted, he'd been reminded that the plot for Avatar was essentially the alien version of Pocahontas…repeatedly…on a daily basis…for three straight years...by his two "best friends," but that was beside the point. He liked seeing why societies functioned the way they did and what led them to function like that. So he took a couple of anthropology classes along with his general education classes in college. And then became an anthropology major. And then started writing about cultures. And became an English minor. And then wrote and drew his own graphic novel. And became an award-winning artist and writer.
So, you know, he was good at what he did.
And since he had two best friends from very different cultures, he learned a lot about those respective cultures—personally and academically.
Which is why he knew what a bashert and a zvug were.
"A bashert is a Jewish soul mate," Sam said, uncrossing his arms and resting his hands on the table. "I thought your ma would've given you lessons about it ever since you were born or something with the way she—okay, yeah. Um, well, according to certain sources, a person can actually have a lot of basherts in one lifetime. That kind of just generalizes the term into people who are…very compatible with each other. It may be a lot, it may be few, but they're out there."
Puck leaned back in his chair and remembered how Nana waved around the kitchen when she said the word. That must've been what she meant—all those flowers were…good for him. They were…generally people who could spend the rest of his life with.
(He was really starting to get irked that his grandmother was still meddling with his love life even from the grave; it was insane.)
"So what are the zvugs?" Mike asked.
Sam leaned forward, his elbows on the table as he clasped his hands together. "They're the real deal—they're the actual soul mates that people flip out about, you know? They're the Prince Charming or the…" He glanced and Puck. "…Girl of Your Dreams."
Puck blanched. Fucking literally—Girl. Of. His. Dreams.
"And there's only one?" Mike asked.
Sam nodded. "Which is why I'm confused as to why Nana showed Puck four flowers. You can only have one zvug."
"No, it makes sense," Puck said, picking up his fork and twirling it between his fingers. "She gave me the makings of a bouquet—it's all for one girl."
Mike frowned. "How do you know that?"
"She tied it with a purple ribbon," Puck said.
Sam cocked his head to the side. "What does that have to do with anything?"
Puck only smirked, thinking of all of Rachel's purple underwear and her grape slushies. "It's gotta do with everything."
Puck felt like such a geek that night. He knew doing Sam's Comic-Con thing had been the worst possible idea. He had his Bluetooth-thing hooked around his ear while Rachel plunked out the notes of the song she was rehearsing, and his laptop was between his bent legs while print-outs of flowers were scattered all around him. They covered his bed, his floor, his desk—you have no idea how hard it is to look for four types of flowers when you don't know their names.
If he'd been researching something legit, he might've felt a little better, but no. He was researching the flowers his dead Nana Connie had showed him in a dream. He was researching flowers for a bouquet for Rachel Berry.
How had his life gotten to this point?
He'd already finalized plans with Tom, and he'd be moving out the following week. Eric would take over the Chicago store, and he, Jake, Marley, and Callum would work in the new flagship store.
It was the weirdest thing, how much things could change in less than a month. Disturbing, really.
"Noah?"
He blinked and rubbed his dry eyes. "Hmm?"
"Can I ask you something…kind of serious?"
"Since when do you ask permission to ask me stuff?"
"I don't want you to joke around about this," she said. "I want a straight answer, okay?"
"Oh, no…"
"It's not… It's not bad, I promise. It's just—I've been wondering about this for a while now, and I want a black and white answer. I-I need defined lines not blurs and technicalities, okay?"
He leaned back against the headboard. "Okay. Shoot."
"What…" She took a breath. "What are we? What am I to you? Are we friends? Are we more than that? Do you…"
Puck smiled. "We were never friends, Berry. And even today, I wouldn't call us that."
"Then what are we? Exes? Old teammates? Because we've talked every day for the last three weeks, and…"
"What do you want, Rachel?"
"It doesn't matter what I want. What matters is what we are. How do you define us? How—"
"You don't define people, Berry," he chortled. "Jeez. You can't define relationships either."
"Then what are we?"
"What do you want us to be?"
"I want to be with you," she said simply, and it made him grin like the idiot he was. "Y-You're infuriating, arrogant, inappropriate, and uncouth, and you're also gut-wrenchingly sweet, considerate, insightful, attentive, talented, hysterical, brilliant, and… And I… I'm tired of meeting guys who saw me first for my talent. You—you saw me—"
"As a little, overdressed pixie being attacked by a lunatic squirrel."
She laughed. "Exactly. I feel like…the guys I've dated fell in love with me because of my voice, and while that's a major portion of my life, you're the only one who sees it as more of a side dish than a main course."
"I'm totally rubbing off on you. You're talking in food metaphors."
"Hush. Why do you like me, Noah?"
He shrugged even though she couldn't see him. "'Cause you're crazy. You never want shows or books to end, you drink flavored water, and you owned a pink electric guitar that you never ever played."
"Why else?"
"'Cause you used to dress like a fucking weirdo but you never gave a shit. Remember that one blue suit-thing you once wore to school? I swear to God, I spent that entire day staring at you 'cause I could not figure out why you wore that."
"My wardrobe choices have changed drastically over the years, Noah."
"Well, thank God, 'cause I don't like the idea of you walking around New York City in plaid miniskirts and knee-high socks," he said. "Your food is actually really good too."
"What?"
"I used to steal your food during lunch when you weren't looking. That vegan shit is actually pretty good. Not the best, but edible and enjoyable."
"Thank you!" she said. "You like me for the strangest reasons, but they have nothing to do with my talent."
"Well, I like you for other reasons too."
"Like what?"
"Remember what we talked about in sophomore year? Before we did that 'Run, Joey, Run' shit?"
"Our lack of impulse control and how people saw us?"
"Yeah. I like you because of that too."
"So we've thoroughly established that we like each other because of the people we are now along with the people we were before," she said after a few seconds. "So what are we?"
"Well, Berry, what do you think we are?"
"Stop being evasive."
"I'm not being evasive. I'm being a dude who doesn't know what the hell is happening. Answer the question, Miss Black-and-White. What do you think we are?"
She took a few seconds to answer, and a part of him kinda wished he hadn't asked afterward while another part of him couldn't help but smirk.
"We're…Puckleberry."
Special thanks go to paceyjwitter of tumblr—she is responsible for the birth of AJ, Andrew Joseph. She wanted Andy Joseph Anderson, actually, but every time I typed out the name, it would up going to "Andynderson" and my fingers wouldn't comply. So it went to "AJ" instead. Regardless, it was her idea to use the mini-Warbler in baby form.