Weeks passed, Quinn started to get huge, and Finn kept ignoring his ex and his former best friend. He occasionally spoke to Rachel and the other Glee kids, but any suggestion they made about reconciliation appeared to fall on deaf ears. Left virtually friendless save Matt and Mike, who were too wrapped up in Brittany and Santana to care too much, Puck found himself spending more and more time with Rachel Berry. He didn't know when it happened, but before long she had become his best friend, and they were suddenly hanging out after school and she was helping him with his vocals while he helped her improve on the guitar. When they weren't working on music she spent her time pestering him to try and talk to Quinn about what would happen with the baby and he steadfastly ignored her.
It was just past a month from Rachel's conversation with Quinn when she realized that she hadn't been slushied in quite some time. Though she definitely didn't miss the icy hazing she found herself wondering exactly what had happened. Curious, she thought back to the last time she had found herself dripping with cherry flavored slush and realized that it was just before they had left for winter break, right after Sectionals. She was sure the timing wasn't a coincidence, so she decided to go to the school's main source of gossip.
Rachel hadn't looked at Jacob's blog in a while, mostly because it was aggravating to discover some sort of picture of her backside or a creepy ode to her beauty every time she opened it. But now she flipped open her star spangled laptop and went directly there, skipping back to the beginning of the mysterious slushie drought. Sure enough, there was a brief post about Puck, Mike, Matt and a couple other guys on the football team 'laying the smack down on' (Please, Jacob's words, not the impeccably well spoken Miss Berry's) some guys from the other sports teams out on the field one day. Evidently they had made it perfectly clear to all of the jocks that the Glee Club was off limits, and that they should pass said information on to everyone else if they valued their lives. Snapping her computer shut in a huff, she crossed her arms.
That was how Puck found her ten minutes later. After knocking and receiving no answer he had ventured into the house. "Rachel, I called guy's prerogative and got a decent movie for you to watch where no one bursts into song. I got your stupid caramel popcorn too. I don't get why you can't just eat regular…" He came to a screeching halt when he saw the look on her face. "Oh shit, what did I do?"
The look on his face would have been quite comical had she not been upset, and even so it was making the corners of her mouth tug upward. "Noah, you beat a bunch of kids up to stop the slushies?"
"Oh that," he practically sighed in relief, setting down the bag from the video store. "Yeah, I thought you knew about that."
"You honestly thought I wouldn't have said anything if I knew? You beat up half the athletes in the school!"
Noah's eyes widened. "You're telling me that you're actually mad? Why the hell are you all butt hurt over the fact that none of the Glee kids, you included, are getting slushie facials?"
She reached out and smacked his arm. "Don't use that offensive term and you know I believe that violence doesn't solve anything!"
"You just smacked me," he deadpanned.
Now Rachel was positively blustering. "Noah you know it's not the same thing!"
With a somewhat frustrated sigh he reached down and grabbed her shoulders firmly, looking her straight in the eye. "Look, sometimes the best way for me to solve something is to use the guns. I'm not good at fixing problems with words and shit, so I do it my way. Anyway nobody's getting attacked in the halls anymore, so isn't that all that matters?"
It hurt just a bit to admit that he was probably right, but she knew he was. Plus, it wasn't all that often that he opened up and said something straight forwardly so it was best to just not argue. "Fine, you're right; but could you please at least try to stop beating people up?" she pled.
"Fine, Berry, but I'm not going to quit cursing. Or saying butt hurt," he muttered.
He didn't even have time to react before she hauled off and smacked him again.
Rachel had just closed the door after Noah when she heard her cell phone trilling from the living room. Running back into the room, she frowned at the name on the caller id before she picked it up.
"Quinn? What…?" She trailed off when she heard the determination in the other girl's voice. Then she asked about Noah. "Quinn is everything okay with the baby?"
When the answer was yes she breathed a sigh of relief, and then felt her mouth curving into a smile as the former Cheerio laid out her plan.
Crashing was the only thing on Puck's mind when he made it home from Rachel's. He may have been willing to admit that she was officially his best friend, but damn the girl could be exhausting. She had questioned the validity of every step of the action movie's plot until he had to resist the urge to pull his hear out and put in a musical just to get her to shut up. Of course she had sung along with every word, but it was better than the nonstop questions.
At home, he dragged himself up the stairs, slammed his door and fell face down on his bed only to be out like a rock in seconds. It was over an hour later when the strains of Defying Gravity filtered into his head, and for a moment he was completely confused. Then he growled as he realized Rachel had changed his ringtone again. Groping for the phone, he fumbled it to his ear and managed to croak out a mangled 'what?' with his face still pressed into the pillow and his eyes closed.
"Noah?"
There were tears in Rachel's voice and suddenly he was wide awake and bolt upright. "What's wrong?"
"There were these guys, and they came over the back fence and were throwing stuff at the windows trying to scare me and there's paintball stuff all over everything and my dads aren't home and I don't know what to do!"
She was rapidly edging towards hysterical, and he didn't even pause to think before he spoke again. "I'll be right there."
Breaking the speed limit was not something that was new to Noah Puckerman, but he was pretty sure he actually broke the land speed record on the way to Berry's that night. She had sounded absolutely terrified when she called him, and he wasn't about to leave her alone. The fact that the old Puck wouldn't have even gotten a call about the incident had occurred to him, but he didn't like to think about the fact that he seemed to feel something deeper than psychotic fascination for Rachel Berry.
He pushed everything else from the back of his mind as he parked his truck at the curb and practically sprinted to the front door. Rachel threw it open before he could knock, tears streaming down her face. The moment he was within reach she launched herself at him, and he half carried her into the house, kicking the door shut behind him.
"It's okay, just show me what happened."
He walked into the living room only to find absolutely no sign of paint on the windows, and a very determined looking Quinn sitting on the couch. With a growl he grabbed Rachel by the shoulders and pulled her away from him only to find the tears already drying on her somewhat apologetic looking face. "You underhanded, devious little diva," he snarled without any real malice. In fact he sounded almost impressed under the annoyance and fear.
"It was my idea, Puck," Quinn piped up from the couch. "I just needed Rachel's help to get you to talk."
Rachel only had eyes for him and she looked up into them with a sad smile. "Just talk it over, Noah. That baby will be here before long and you can't pretend that the two of you don't need to make a decision. Listen to what she has to say."
For a moment they both seemed to forget there was anyone else in the room, and seeing the plea in Rachel's eyes Puck knew she was right. If he didn't deal with this he would likely never even get to see his little girl. So he nodded. "Okay."
"Good." She stood up on tip toe to kiss his cheek. "I'll be in the kitchen if you two need anything."
Quinn watched the exchange with something akin to amazement, but her attention completely refocused on Puck when he sat in the chair across from her. "I won't apologize for bringing Rachel into this."
"You don't have to," he said gruffly. "Berry doesn't do anything she doesn't want to, and she's wanted me to talk to you for a while. What I don't get is why you're even here." His eyes met hers and she wasn't surprised to see disdain in them. "I thought you wanted to do this all on your own."
"I did," she told him quietly. "But seeing you with Rachel the past couple of months has made me realize some things; like the fact that I don't have the right to decide by myself what happens with this baby. But either way a decision has to be made and Mr. Schuester's probably soon to be ex-wife isn't an option."
"Yeah, that much I caught on to."
She nodded. "It seems pretty clear… Puck, I can't keep her."
"You mean you don't want to," he spat out.
"No," she said with a wavering voice as her hands drifted protectively to her belly. "I can't. I can't bring this little person into the world knowing that I might not be able to take care of her. Who's going to help us if we keep her? Your mom? A single parent with two kids of her own? Rachel's family, the Glee kids? My parents? In case you haven't noticed I'm living with Santana because they kicked me out and still won't speak to me and because Finn can't stand to look at me."
Shit, he hated tears. "Screw Finn."
She was on her feet as fast as she could be, closing in on him as her voice began to rise. "No, screw you Puck! Because that's what happened! We screwed the hell up!"
Crap, she was swearing, this was bad. He stood up and reached for her, but she pulled away. "Quinn…"
"No! You're going to listen to me," she cried. "We made the biggest mistake of our lives, and I can't fix it. I lost one of the only people who has ever really loved me because I was feeling lonely and angry and had a few too many wine coolers! And we didn't just screw up our own lives; we brought another one into the mess!"
"You think I don't get that?! Trust me; I fucking comprehend that one, Quinn. Finn won't talk to me, and you want to take my daughter away from me without even giving me a chance to really be her father! I want to do right by that baby."
They were both breathless and silent in the aftermath of their screaming match. Her breath hitching in her chest and the tears slowing, she dropped gingerly back onto the chair. "I think the best way we to do right by her is to give her up, Puck."
"Why?" he asked, an edge of desperation in his voice.
She heard it clear as day, and it wasn't until then that she fully comprehended just how much he wanted to be involved in the baby's life. "We could keep her, and we could give her the best life that we could manage, but let's face it; how much of a life could that be? She'd have two parents, sure, but one or both of us would probably have to drop out to work to pay for food and diapers and clothes. It's hard enough to get a job right now without the added problem of not having a high school diploma. We don't love each other, Puck. We don't even like each other most of the time. What kind of message would that send to our daughter?"
He didn't want to hear it; he hadn't wanted to hear it since the very beginning, because they were the same questions and insecurities and worries that had been coursing through him from the start. "I don't know what you want me to say."
Quinn shook her head. "Just keep listening for a minute. I've been looking into adoption." She saw the anger in his eyes and shook her head. "Please just listen? I've been looking into an open adoption. We pick the family, we get to meet them and know everything we want about them; and since it's an open adoption we would get to be involved in her life to a certain degree. They'll send us pictures and letters, maybe even let us see her, I don't quite understand all of it."
"I didn't think you would want to see her," he mumbled.
"I didn't either, but carrying a little person around for all this time will do interesting things to your heart." There were tears coursing down her cheeks again. "I love her, I really do, just as much as you do; but I don't think I can give her everything she needs. I don't think we can."
Noah knew she was right, and that was what hurt the most. He was a teenage football player who baked pot into cupcakes and actually contemplated stealing money from a friend in a wheelchair for his own purposes. He liked dip and beer and women and if someone like him ever came near his daughter he would have chased them off in a heartbeat. As much as he hated to admit it, the whole open adoption thing actually sounded like a good idea. He would get to see his little girl as she grew up and know what she was doing with his life, but she'd have responsible, established parents with real jobs and a 401K and shit. He knew he was never going to talk Quinn into keeping their daughter, but this seemed like the next best option. "I'm not saying that I'm completely down with this," he said quietly. "But if you want to bring over the crap so we can look at parents and stuff that would be okay."
A smile lit up her face as she rose, wanting to get the heck out of dodge before he changed his mind. "Thank you, Puck. I really mean that." She gave him a hesitant hug before making her way to the kitchen to tell Rachel she was heading home.
Rachel had heard every word of the conversation, mostly due to the sheer volume of the majority of it and the fact that she couldn't escape the kitchen without walking right through the middle of it. She couldn't even imagine what the two of them were feeling right at that moment, but somehow she wasn't surprised to find Noah sitting on the couch in her living room, staring into space and looking just a bit lost.
Quietly, she made her way across the room to stand next to him, brushing a hand over his shoulder. "Noah?"
He barely registered the touch. "We're going…" His voice was shaky when he said it.
Rachel had learned to read him like a book, so she cut him off. "I heard all of it, and I understand if you don't want to talk about it."
Puck nodded. "Yeah." Her hand brushed against his shoulder again and he caught it, drawing her down into his lap to wrap his arms around her. "I think I just made the biggest decision of my life and I just…. I need something to hold onto right now."
She didn't say a word, just kissed his forehead like she had so many other times, and settled into his arms with her nestled into the crook of his neck and let him anchor himself. She didn't know how long they stayed that way in silence, but she knew that it took her a while to work up to saying what she wanted to, and when she did it was whispered against his skin. "I think this is the bravest thing you've ever done, Noah Puckerman."
He didn't answer; found he couldn't, actually. Because he didn't feel brave, he just felt shattered. So he kept his mouth shut and held onto Rachel like a lifeline. And when she started singing a soft lullaby he silently willed away the tears.
Note From The Author—Okay, so because adoption can be a sensitive subject, I decided to put a little note here. This chapter is not meant to be any kind of a statement as to my opinions or beliefs about adoption or about teenage pregnancy. Mostly it is simply the best situation I could come up for to suit this story and Puck and Quinn's personalities and relationship. If it offends anyone I sincerely apologize, but also urge you to remember that this is only fiction.
