A/N: So sorry that it has taken me so long to post - I've been experiencing computer issues, and as my whole storyboard for this story was saved on this computer, I wasn't able to access it... I couldn't really do anything with that. I hope that this will make up for some of the lost time, and I've already begun working on the next chapter. Additionally, "Papa Don't Preach" was awesome this week!

Disclaimer: La la la I own nothing la la la.


She had awoken with a start. Noah Puckerman. Was here. In her apartment. In her bed. Oh. My. God. She had watched him sleep until she couldn't fend off sleep herself, but while she had been watching him she had watched the concern and pain drift out of his features; she had watched as his muscles relaxed and uncoiled. He looked so gentle laying there underneath her covers. He looked at home there – as if that was where he was meant to lay.

She looked at him again, drinking in the vision of him bathed in the morning sunlight. He looked at peace; his chest easily rising and falling, his mouth parted just slightly. She had waited for four years for him to come back into her life. She had waited four years for him to forgive her for leaving him in Lima. She couldn't believe that it had taken that long, but at the same time, she couldn't believe that he had actually been able to forgive her.

She was curled up on her chaise lounge watching him intently when he half-snorted in his sleep and twitched. She had a moment of panic – he's awake, what do I say to him – before realizing that he was still asleep and she didn't have to worry about that yet.

She did have to worry about it, though, because he wasn't going to sleep forever. At some point he would wake up and he would have questions. She needed to provide him with real answers, not heat-of-the-moment answers. She needed to be able to ask him well thought-out questions, not anger-inspired questions. She needed to stop looking at him, because the rise and fall of his chest was mesmerizing her.

She dragged her gaze away from his body and looked around the room. It was her bedroom; the bedroom she had lived in ever since she had convinced her fathers that dorm life wasn't the best choice for her. They had supported her decision, and as long as she paid all of her bills and provided her own spending money, they footed the rent bill every month.

She had lived in the apartment for three years, but she had never felt at home there. She had always felt as if something was missing from the apartment, but she couldn't put her finger on what it was. She had decorated and redecorated, searching for the perfect combination of light and dark, sophisticated and feminine. The end result had her apartment looking like a model home, and she felt almost uncomfortable being in it –except for one room.

The movie room, she called it, but it was more than just a movie room. It held her movies and her projector, but it also held all of her music, her scores, her reading material. It was the only room painted in her signature Rachel Berry pink, and the only room that felt personal to her.

When she had been decorating the room she had striven to create a room in which she could feel comfortable with herself and at peace. She had thought long and hard about what had made her the happiest; when she had felt the most like herself. The answer was clear, it was easy, but she hadn't been sure she wanted to go that route. She didn't want to keep holding onto the past. If she was living in the past, she would never be able to move forward.

Eventually, she had given in and put up all of her pictures of Paris and pictures of her friends. She had filled a lot of photograph albums with pictures from her sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school, and she had selected the very best of these to display in this room. The most important picture she kept on the end table next to the sofa.

The sofa was a warm, chocolate brown and it was soft and amazingly comfortable. She felt so at peace in this room that she often wound up sleeping on the sofa instead of in her own bed. Every night that she fell asleep in this room she fell asleep staring at the picture of the kiss they had shared at the end of "Break Free."

She had barely been able to contain herself – her emotions had been running so high, the adrenaline had been pumping through her so hard, that when they were being called forward for another curtain call, she hadn't been able to stop. She had needed to kiss him; she had needed to tell him how happy she was. She had needed to tell him how proud of him she was; how much she loved him. She put everything that she couldn't verbalize into that kiss.

That kiss had been burned into her memory and as she stared at the picture of them, night after night, she wondered how she had ever been able to turn her back on him and walk away. She had been foolish and headstrong. She had been a teenager and she had determined that she was right, and that this had been the only course of action that would lead her to be a star. The star she had worked her whole life to be.

Yeah, some star she thought to herself as she tried to get out of the chair as quietly as possible. Stardom and friendship had eluded her at Julliard, and they were eluding her in the real world as well. She still had her dads, Kurt, Quinn, and Finn, but she didn't have anyone, or anything else. When she attended open mike nights, the crowd would roar appreciatively whenever she sang, but the moment she stepped from the stage it was as if she had vanished from the room. No one ever bought her a drink. She had once stood at a bar for 20 minutes trying to get the attention of the barman when he had finally come over to her.

"What would you like?" the guy had asked her. She had opened her mouth to place her order but before she could speak, he had started up again.

"Did you see that last girl up on stage? Man, she can sing! It's surprising she hasn't been signed yet, you know?" he said, making polite conversation.

"Thank-you," she had replied, blushing at the compliment.

"What?" he had asked her, confused.

"Thank-you for the compliment," she had clarified for him.

"Have you sung yet?" he asked her, and she felt the blush recede and her eyes begin to water.

"No," she whispered, and turned and walked away from the bar.

She had tried not to let it get to her, but of course it had. It was just another event in a very long list of things that hadn't turned out the way she had hoped. So was her life.

She had managed to remove herself from the chair without making much noise. Quietly she fluffed the pillows and cushions and crept from the room. She pulled the door partly closed behind her, and then went into the living room.

What is he going to think when he sees this place she wondered, gazing at her museum of furniture and tasteful décor. Right, because that was the important thing here. Wondering about what he was going to think of her home. Sure. Focus Berry! she berated herself.

He had been absolutely wasted when she had brought him home the night before, which meant that he was probably going to have a wicked-nasty hangover when he finally emerged from sleep. Having not experienced a single hangover in her life (she had no one to go out and get drunk with) she was unsure of what his needs would be. Panicking, she grabbed her cell phone out of her purse on the coffee table and hit speed dial six.

"Darling, how fabulous to hear from you!" the voice on the other end of the line exclaimed. "How has my Broadway Baby been doing?"

"Kurt, I don't have a lot of time right now, and I can't be very loud, but I need to know what to do when someone has a hangover!" the words rushed out of her.

"Whoa, slow down sweetie. First of all, you don't hangover (obvi) so you must need this for someone else which means that you have managed to procure a man, (or a friend)" he added hesitantly, "at long last. But I'd rather it be a man than a friend."

"Kurt! Focus!" she interrupted him.

"Second" he continued as if he hadn't heard her, "if you're worrying about what you need to do for someone with a hangover, that means that you aren't somewhere where you can cut-and-run before the hangover starts playing, which means you must be in your apartamento." Rachel growled at him in frustration, but he paid her no mind.

"Third, if you have a man in your apartment in need of a hangover remedy, that means that you went somewhere last night and picked someone up and brought them back to your apartment, drunk, which means" he emphasized and paused while drawing in a big breath, "you had sex!" At this, he squealed with delight.

"Kurt. I did not have sex with anyone. I did not "hook up" with anyone. I don't have time to talk about it right now, but I really need to know what to do for a person who has a hangover. Like, right now." Her tone was forceful, and her sternness forced him to stop giggling.

"Fine, diva-tastic, spoil my fun. There are 6, possibly 7, important steps involved with dealing with a hangover. First, you must provide an empty trashcan, because this person might get sick, and might not make it to the toilet before hurling. Imagine that on your floors." Rachel shivered. She loved him, but she did not want the first interaction they had to be one of her wiping his puke from the floor as he watched.

"Second, you must provide water. Lots of alcohol equals massive dehydration, and one's brain will feel shrink-wrapped until they rehydrate. Also, they will probably have a crazy cottonmouth thing going on, which needs to be cleared out. Stat." As he was directing her, she was rummaging through her kitchen, pulling out a plastic bag from the bundle under the sink and grabbing a cold liter of SmartWater from the fridge.

"Third, you must provide painkillers. Very important, these painkillers are, because a hangover feels like someone has driven a dump truck over your body and through your brain. That kind of thing must be resolved quickly, otherwise the other steps won't be as effective," he directed her.

"Does it matter what kind?" she asked, hoping she had the right brand.

"Not really, but I prefer ibuprofen over acetaminophen, and nothing candy coated. The coating will make it stick to your dry-ass tongue and start dissolving, which will make you want to hurl." Motrin it is she thought, running to the bathroom.

"Fourth, you must provide caffeine. Caffeine helps spread the painkillers through your system and also provides energy to actually get out of bed and move onto the next few steps. I know you don't have any coffee there in that apartment, Berry, so you'd better run out and get some for your sex-toy," he teased her. When she growled into the phone he moved onto the next step.

"Fifth, you need food. Not that bird-food you have there at the apartment, but food. The greasier, the better, normally. So get that when you go out," he continued.

"Sixth, the hungover person will need to use the bathroom. Whether it's a number one or a number two or both, bathroom use is very important to starting the healing process." TMI she thought.

"Seventh, and this is only a possibility because I don't know how long you wish to keep your new friend around, the hungover person will need to take a shower. Whether he takes it there, or elsewhere, is up to you, but showers normally make people start feeling human again a lot faster than just waiting for the awful to pass. So make up your mind about that last one, and you should be all set, sweetie," he concluded.

"Thanks Kurt, I appreciate it," she said as she arranged put the plastic bag into the bathroom trashcan and gathered the water bottle and Motrin off of the counter.

"Anytime, darling," he told her, and then continued, "but you so owe me details as soon as you have the situation under control. I expect another phone call within the next few hours, or I am going to get on a plane to the big apple and kick your Berry ass, understood?" he threatened her.

"Deal," she replied, and then clicked off the phone. She tip-toed as silently as she could back into the room and gently set the items down next to the edge of the bed. She arranged them neatly and within what she hoped was good grabbing distance from the bed, and then paused to look at him once more.

A lump rose in her throat and she turned and exited the room as quietly as she could manage. She closed the door behind her, gently letting the door handle click back into its resting position, and then moved swiftly to the coffee table and grabbed her purse. She grabbed her shoes from the night before and walked silently to the door.

After she had locked the apartment door behind her she pulled on her shoes and leaned against the doorframe. Should she leave a note? He might wake up while she was gone, and she didn't want him to worry that she had left him again. Don't be stupid she scolded herself. If he wakes up and you're gone, he knows you have to come back because it's your apartment. You kind of live there.

She steeled her nerves and pushed herself away from the door and walked (okay, half-strutted) to the elevator. The doors closed in front of her and she leaned against the back wall of the elevator cab and tried to figure out what kind of greasy food and caffeine Noah would enjoy. It had been so long since she had kept track of his preferences…she knew nothing about who he was, what he liked, or how to take care of him anymore.

A wave of sadness washed over her, but she tried to banish it with an upsurge of hope. No, she might not know all of those things about him now, but that he was asleep in her apartment was testament to the fact that she could know all of those things about him once again. In fact, he probably hadn't changed his go-to food and caffeine choices in four years. She could probably get him what she had gotten him after long nights of talking or bad dreams… what she had brought him every Saturday morning after a football game. She would get him coffee and fresh doughnuts.

She strutted out of the elevator and hurried down the sidewalks to the closest Krispy Kreme location. She knew that he loved their fresh-from-the-oven plain cake doughnuts with their sugary glaze. The first anniversary of Leah's death they had stayed up talking all night long eating Krispy Kreme's and drinking coffee. Rachel had drunk hers halfway full with milk while Noah had stirred enough sugar into it to make the spoon stand straight up. They had laughed and they had cried and they had made a memory that was permanently etched into Rachel's brain.

She bought the doughnuts and made a quick stop off at the Starbucks a block from her apartment. Armed with 2 Venti Sumatra's (doctored appropriately), a box of fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and various other sundries, she made her way back into her apartment building and to the outside of her apartment door.

She listened for a moment at the doorway, trying to hear if he was awake and moving around. The elevator door dinged behind her, and she realized she couldn't hear anything at all. Whether or not that meant he was still asleep and was not moving around her apartment or that he was running around her apartment freaking out and she just couldn't hear him, she decided to bite the bullet and put her key into the first lock.

She undid the rest of the locks and carefully opened the front door, almost afraid to look to see if he was awake yet. There was no movement in the room, so she pushed the door shut behind her and locked the door.

She moved directly to the kitchen, not pausing to see if the bathroom light was on or the bedroom door was ajar. She put away the items that she had bought and ripped open the box of doughnuts, placing one on a plate for him.

She grabbed his coffee in one hand and the plate in the other and moved determinedly towards his door. Just check on him she told herself, convincing herself that he wasn't awake and that they wouldn't have to talk about everything yet.

She took in a deep, steadying breath and turned the door handle. When she opened the door she could see that he was sleeping, but she decided to check the water and other items to make sure he hadn't woken up alone. When she saw that the water bottle was only half full, her heart leapt into her chest and she began to panic.

Why had he gone back to sleep? Did he know where he was? Did he think that she abandoned him again? Was he worried or upset of angry? What was going on?

"Noah?" she whispered, trying to discover whether or not he was sleeping sleeping, or just pretending to sleep.

She heard him make his wake-up noise and she watched as he shifted and stretched in the bed. Was he waking up, or had she just disturbed his slumber? She worried for a moment and then she saw his eye begin to open and she knew that this was it; that her moments for thinking and planning were over – she was about to speak to Noah for the first time in four very long years.

"Rachel?" she heard him ask, and the sound of his voice speaking her name nearly drove her to the brink of tears. He looked confused and sounded uncertain about where he was and why.

"Oh!" she squeaked, and leaned away from the bed. "You're awake!"

"Yeeeah," he yawned and stretch-squirmed in her bed.

"Oh! Well, I got you some breakfast," she said uncertainly. "I know you always used to like doughnuts in the mornings after long nights, so I went and got you fresh doughnuts and coffee," she said, glancing at him nervously. She didn't want to make him think of the other implications of coffee and doughnuts. She didn't want him to shove the coffee back in her face or throw the doughnut at the wall. She really didn't want to agitate whatever type of hangover he had. She really hoped he still loved her.

She waited, breath baited as he processed what she had said. She could tell that it took a lot of effort on his part to put things together.

"Rachel…" he began and then trailed off, looking at her concernedly. She wasn't sure what he was concerned about – he couldn't really want to start talking about everything when he was only 60 seconds out of sleep mode, could he?

"Rachel, why am I here?" he asked her, and her heart plummeted into her stomach.

Why was he here? How could he not know why he was here?

"Noah… we ran into each other a bar last night. You were talking to a girl who said my name, and when I turned around, you were right there. You were very drunk, though, and needed to go home before you got sick. I didn't know where you lived, but my apartment was close, so I brought you here…" she said unsteadily.

"Where are my clothes?" he asked, a note of harshness in his voice. She flinched at the tone – he had only spoken to her harshly once or twice in their whole relationship. His tone reminded her of Puck, the boy who used to torment her in her early years of high school.

"You had gotten sick on them last night, so I put them in the wash when I got up this morning…they must be ready to go into the dryer by now…" she was still unsure of where this was heading, of how it was going.

"Oh," was his only response. They sat there and stared at each other for a moment before Noah closed his eyes and asked her the hardest question in the world:

"Rachel, why did you leave me?"