A/N: Okay so warning the end of this chapter get pretty dark and heavy. And I grossly overuse the word and at the end. Also, thank you so much for all of the reviews.
The first thing he does in New York is shave the mohawk. Technically she shaves it for him, in a gas station bathroom near the bus stop. She says something about it'll be easier to find him if he doesn't have the Mohawk (which is ridiculous because unlike Lima in New York he isn't the only person with a mohawk); he just wants a fresh start.
The second thing they do is go apartment hunting. Rachel is predictably OCD about it. They sit on a bench with all of there stuff and circle every place that Rachel thinks might work. They even have a color-coded system.
"Maybe I should go alone. We can't exactly drag all of our stuff along everywhere. You could sit with the stuff so it doesn't get stolen, and I'll come back when I find someplace suitable for us to live." Rachel rambles.
Puck scoffs, "No way in hell am I letting you look for an apartment alone. On the off chance you don't get raped or mugged, you'll pick out some girly ass apartment that a stud like me can't be seen in."
Rachel rolls her eyes, "First of all I've had taekwondo training since I was seven, so I would not be raped. Second of all if you're so adamant we go together, what do you think we should do with our stuff?"
He wasn't really sure. Rachel brought almost every thing she owned, and he didn't really want to carry her 29 pairs of shoes around New York City. After trying to come up with an idea for a good five minutes he decides to just go along with her original idea.
And the apartment she picks out doesn't completely make him want to puke.
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They're unpacking their things (or rather he's unpacking all of her shit while she yells at him to be more careful) when Puck realizes it. The apartment is one room. He is going to have to share the Murphy-bed with Rachel "batshit-crazy" Berry. She's going to murder him in his sleep.
"Um, Berry," he says casually. She glances up from where she's arranging all of her facial products in their itty-bitty bathroom. "Uh," he feels incredibly awkward, "What are going to do about, you know, like sleeping arrangements because, uh, this apartment only has, like, one bed."
She gasps and drops her vanilla body lotion. Clearly this hadn't occurred to her either. He can see the wheels turning in her head. She finally states mater-a-factly, "We can just buy an air mattress. You can sleep on it in the kitchen… area, the kitchen area." She needs to get used to living in one room.
He scoffs, "Oh and what makes you think that I am going to sleep on the air mattress? Why wont you?"
Rachel looks at him, affronted, "Have you ever heard of being chivalrous? Besides a future starlet like myself can't run the risks of the back problems sleeping on an air mattress can cause!"
"Oh, and I can handle back problems?" Puck raises an eyebrow.
Rachel looks at him coyly, "Well, I was under the impression you were badass…"
He nods at her seriously, "I am badass." The fact that he is badass is not much of a consalation prize when he finds himself sleeping on an air mattress in the kitchen that night.
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The next day is spent trying to get their fake identities together. Rachel immediately shoots down Puck's top three names (Neil Anblowme, Justin Yermouth, and Mike Oxsbig). She then threatens to stab him when he suggests she goes by Anita Dickinme.
"Celine, Barbra, Celine, Barbra," Rachel mutters under her breath. She sighs and turns to Puck, "I can't decide which one do you like better: Celine or Barbra?"
Puck snorts. After Rachel glares at him, he grins, "Wait, you're serious?"
Rachel lets out a shriek that he's sure only dogs can hear and says, "Of course I'm serious." When he bursts into another round of laughter, she huffs in annoyance, "If you're such a genius then what do you suggest for a name?" He smirks at her and raises his eyebrow. "…Preferably something that doesn't have the word dick in it."
He holds up his hands in mock innocence. He ponders for a second, looking around the room for inspiration. He almost suggest Drizzle before he remembers that they left Quinn and Finn behind in Lima for a reason. He grins as the name comes to him, "What about Caroline?"
She's blushing when she looks down, but she's smiling too. "Yeah, I think that'll work." She wonders how someone who can be such a jackass can be incredibly sweet sometimes too. She figures this is what life's like with Noah Puckerman; when it's bad it absolutely awful, but when it's good she feels like she can fly.
She bites her lower lip. "I still need a last name," she says.
He glances at the copy of Schindler's List that had yet to be unpacked (he brought so he could feel connected to his Jewish roots). "Hitler," he says decisively, "You have a lot in common with the guy." That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but he figures she'd totally kill a shitload of people to get a Grammy or a Tony or an Oscar.
"Noah!" she sounds scandalized, "You do realize that as a Jew I find that incredibly offensive." He likes how her face gets all red when she's angry.
He shrugs, "Well, you know, that'll make it harder for them to track us down." She finally agrees. After all, who is she to argue with that logic.
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After they have their aliases figured out (he's John Smith because it sounds badass and she wouldn't let him do anything remotely dirty), Puck takes care of getting the fake birth certificates and IDs (he knows a guy that knows a guy).
Rachel insists that they immediately set out looking for jobs. She has a schedule that includes every Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway audition from now until next year. He sets his sights lower.
He contemplates with becoming a stripper just to get a reaction out of her (besides who wouldn't want to see his guns), but he doesn't know anything about male strippers seeing as he's not gay. He applies for work at a small deli outside Time Square. He knows he's going to get the job because the woman who owns the place is a Jewish cougar.
Puck gets the job (or rather 'John Smith' does), but Rachel goes from audition to audition not catching a break. He might strangle her if he has to hear about how unfair the audition process is again.
They're sitting in their apartment sipping wine (Caroline and John are respectively twenty-two) after a particularly hard audition when she asks softly, "Remember the night we left?"
He looks up at her from where he's sitting on his air mattress. They had seemed to have an unspoken agreement not to speak of Lima or that night. Regardless he nods, "How could I forget?"
She leans against the counter, "That night, before you came, I was at a Glee party at Artie's." She looks at him, "You weren't invited because Kurt wanted Finn to come, and that wouldn't happen if you or Quinn were there."
He isn't sure where she's going with this so he lets her continue. "Everybody was high off the Sectionals win. Matt had scored a keg, and everyone was drinking and having fun. And I,"
She pauses and when he looks at her she doesn't look confident, driven, sixteen-year-old Rachel Berry. She just looks sad. "And I was being accepted. Everyone was telling me how good I did on my solo. It was like having friends."
She sighs deeply, "Brittany and Santana were making out in a corner, and Matt was flirting with Mercedes, and Mike was attempting to teach Kurt how to "Pop-Lock it". Tina and Artie were making up, and it was one of those parties where everything was peaceful and fun. And I was talking to Finn."
It's so quiet in their apartment. Her voice is the only sound. Outside, somewhere far away, you could vaguely hear people partying, but in their apartment everything was still. "He kissed me, and I remember thinking this is what high school should be like, with friends and parties and cute boys that kiss you under the stars."
"Eventually it got late, and everybody began to disperse. Finn left first. He promised that he would call me the next day. Matt and Mike left shortly after him. Brittany and Santana had disappeared a while back. My dads had dropped me off, so Kurt and Mercedes offered me a ride."
She closed her eyes, "And God Puck, they were so drunk. They shouldn't have been driving, but I didn't want to say anything because they were being my friends."
She's crying now. Tears race down her face and her voice trembles, "So we got in Kurt's car, and we started driving. I was in the back; Mercedes had shotgun. There was a man. Or a woman. A person riding their bike. And we should have seen them, but Lady Gaga was on the radio. Kurt was singing about his Poker Face, and then we hit something. Someone. And you've seen Kurt's car. They didn't have a chance"
"Kurt and Mercedes were freaking. Mercedes was convincing herself that it must have been a moose or something. God! A moose in Ohio. And Kurt was just so drunk. So fucking drunk. And I'll I could think about was how if I got arrested I wouldn't get into Julliard. So we drove away. And then you knocked on my window, Noah. And you offered me an escape, a way to run away from what I did. So I took it."
She's shaking now, and he walks over to her. He put his arm around her as she collapses on the kitchen floor and kisses her temple. He strokes her hair and whispers things like it'll be okay in her ear. When she calms down a little, he turns to her, "Quinn fell."
Her eyes are red and puffy, "Huh?"
"That night, when you were at the party, I was with Quinn. She was throwing herself a pity party at my house, and I was using it as an excuse to prove that I'd be a good dad. She was getting fed up with it, so she got up to leave. She was walking up the stairs of my basement, and I tried to stop her. She just blew up at me. She started screaming about how Finn would have been a better father and how it was my fault her life sucked and a whole bunch of other shit."
"And I just snapped. I started yelling back, telling her she was a bitch. She pushed me, really hard. I stumbled down a couple step, but she must have put too much weight into it or something because she fell. She fell down the stairs and landed on her stomach. And then, well, you should have seen all the blood. I rushed to help her, but there was so much blood. Blood everywhere, it was so red. I had it all over my hands. I had my baby's blood all over my hands in more ways then one. Do you know how screwed up that is?"
He's still scary calm and quiet, "Do you realize how fucking screwed up that is? I drove her to the hospital, but it was too late. She lost the baby. It's my fault. I couldn't breathe in there so I left. I went to you place."
Her eyes are big and sad, and she says softly, "Oh God, Noah." This time she holds him as he cries for the first time since that night.
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They don't talk about it in the morning.