There were good kisses, and then there was the one that Puck gave Rachel below his bedroom window that cold November night in Lima with his mother and little sister watching on from the second story above. She had been struggling with a way to show her boyfriend that she was there for him when she had decided to do what she always did and sing out her feelings in a fitting song. While she had momentarily wondered if he would disapprove of such an overt display of emotion, she knew that the bigger part of him would appreciate it because he really needed to know that she was on his side right now. He had been right when he had told her that she couldn't understand what he was going through, but she could relate to watching the person she cared about most going through something bigger than him.

"You're amazing, you know that?" he murmured as he framed her face in his hands, his calloused fingers stroking the soft skin of her cheeks back and forth. "You, that song – just, Berry. I can't even find the words. Just thank you, okay? Thank you."

She beamed up at him radiantly then, nodding before going to her tiptoes to press another kiss to his mouth. "I want you to know that you don't have to go through this alone. You don't just have Becca and your mom, Noah," she pledged. "We're all going to support you every single step of the way. You might have fought the battle alone the last time but that was before. You know that I would never give up and just walk away without at least fighting for the chance to let me help you."

His fingers carded through her hair as he drew her lips to his once again. "I'm gonna push you away and probably fight you on it more than I should, but I don't want to go through this without you," he admitted. She had already known as much. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Rach. It scares me how much I need you. I'm not very good at that part of being in a relationship. I've never been able to rely on much other than Bex and Ma. I'm so afraid that I'll get used to you being there and then you won't be anymore."

"I'm not going anywhere as long as you'll have me," she reassured him, her hands gripping his wrists from where his palms still rested on her face. "I admit that I haven't always excelled at putting others before me or allowing myself to let anyone else meddle into my emotional affairs, but I think I could be a pretty good resource if you will let me be there for you. And it's not just me either. You know that you have Samuel, Brittany and Blaine who want to be there for you, too."

She wasn't sure how she got him to agree, but by the time they flew back to New York together on Sunday night, Puck had agreed to let them work out a schedule so that he wasn't alone for too long in Lima. Whether that meant her flying out with him or arranging a working schedule during the winter break for when they'd all be back in Lima, the four of them were going to get Puck and his family through this. She knew that it was a huge concession on his part, but it was the only way she was sure that they would get through this intact. It was inevitable that he was going to push her away at some point, but for right now, he was willing to let her help.

Rachel didn't have too much time to dwell on it because she was thrown right back into the thick of things Monday morning when classes resumed at NYADA. They were working on a complicated piece, a four-piece baroque minstrel that hadn't been popular since the latter part of the 17th century. One of the girls was having a difficult time hitting notes in the higher range and another couldn't seem to master the Old English lyrics that were far out of the typical realm. Since they were all performing in equal parts, it wasn't as though they could rely on a solo to carry them through. The recital piece required that all four of them be strong and consistent, and right now, they just weren't.

She could feel the tension building before they had left for break, but after discovering that neither of the struggling girls had practiced whatsoever since they'd been gone, it was enough to send her off in one of her patented diva fits not seen since her days at McKinley. "You have got to be kidding me. If you think I am getting on the stage and humiliating myself with those two, you simply must be delusional," Rachel roared angrily one day in the middle of practice. Their professor, an unassuming man in his mid-fifties with round spectacles, looked at her as if she had grown a second head. "Either you work it out so that this is a duet, or better yet a solo, or you can find yourself another first soprano. I am far too talented to see it wasted on such a travesty of a performance."

Rachel had stomped out of the auditorium then without giving her fellow singers or her professor a chance to talk. Though some part of her suspected that she was overreacting, it was only later when she was recounting the self-perceived saga to Blaine that she realized what she had done. "I sounded just like I did when glee first started out," she realized allowed, and she didn't even glare at Blaine when he told her that was kind of obvious. "They sounded so horrible but instead of offering to help, I acted like I was better than them. I thought I had grown past that."

"As much as you want to pretend that you've changed, Rachel, some part of you is always going to be the plaid-skirt-wearing, afraid-of-slushies diva that we all first met and fell in love with," he told her pointedly. "That can be both a good and a bad thing, often at the same time. This is one of the bad times, though, and you probably owe everyone an apology involved. Even if they won't take you back, they deserve to hear that you're sorry. You could probably still offer to help them out even if they've already replaced you."

Two days later, she stopped by the student aid office on her way to the auditorium to apologize to the other three girls and her professor. She knew that she had about an hour to kill before they would meet up, so she decided to take care of the letter that had come to the loft for her a few days before Thanksgiving break. The line was ridiculously long like always, so she spent most of it working out a new arrangement on a jazz piece in her head. She wasn't the only one using the idle time to "study," even smiling over at a guy working through a hip hop dance piece as she practiced her own choreography.

"Yes, I got this letter," she told her financial aid advisor when she was finally ushered into his office. The man scanned through the letter and frowned over at her apologetically. She hadn't really understood what it had meant before, but she knew enough to understand that the look of pity he was giving her now wasn't a good thing. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Ms. Berry, I'm sorry, but it seems that the grant that was behind your scholarship has ran out and we have not been able to secure additional funding to keep the program going after this semester," he informed her as he slid the letter back toward her. "It appears from your records that it was paying half of your tuition while the other part came from private payments, likely your parents?"

Rachel nodded. "My fathers agreed to pay for half of my education, and I received the scholarship for the other part," she explained. "Are there any other scholarships or grants I can apply for?"

"I am afraid not," he replied. "It's too late; most of the deadlines for the spring semester have long passed. You can apply for a student loan that will cover your tuition and performance fees, but you will not be eligible for any monies related to living expenses."

"So I can't come back here if I don't figure out a way to pay for everything within the next two weeks?"

"Again, I'm sorry, but that pretty much covers it," he said. "There are some work study programs still available that you can use to supplement any other income you have. I can even put you in our system as a priority case to help you get assigned more quickly."

Rachel quickly filled out the necessary forms before he dismissed her from his office so that he could get to the next student. She decided to blow off her minstrel group because she knew her bad mood would do little to improve their working conditions. After sending off a quick apologetic text to the one girl in the group she had not totally alienated with an excuse of illness and a promise to be at their next rehearsal, Rachel headed back to the loft to drown her sorrows in a tub of vegan carob and caramel ice cream. She had thought the place would be empty since everyone had class at that time, but she found Puck sitting barefoot in the middle of the kitchen floor with his guitar in his lap and a spiral notebook spread out beside him.

"Why are you here?" she muttered as she darted past him and right toward the freezer. She didn't bother with manners as she hopped onto the counter and started eating the frozen treat straight from the tub with an oversized serving spoon. "I thought you had class."

"Nice to see you too, Berry," he remarked as he fiddled with the G string on his guitar. "The professor cancelled so that we could have extra time to work on our original pieces for my upper level songwriting class. Don't you have rehearsal yourself or something? What's with the huffy attitude and the ice cream extravaganza?"

She glared up at him over her carton. "I had to go by the financial aid office and got some bad news. I'm not really in the mood to deal with those girls, so I blew it off and came home to enjoy some empty calories. I do not want a lecture about it from you either."

"Financial aid?"

"My scholarship fell through. I basically have two weeks to figure out how I am going to pay for my schooling and living expenses next semester," she explained hotly, spooning another bite into her mouth for emphasis. "I could ask my fathers for the money, but we agreed that I would take care of half of it. This scholarship was supposed to be good for four years, Noah. How can they just cancel a grant?"

"How much will it add up to?"

"A lot. Like a lot, a lot," she answered. "I just wanted to be able to do this on my own without their help."

"What about my help?"

"What do you mean your help?"

He sat down his guitar and stood up so that he could walk over to her. He slipped between her legs and snagged the bit of ice cream sitting atop the outstretched spoon. "I have some money saved up, more than I am going to need even if I do end up in New York. Ma talked to the insurance guy, so we should have more help there than we did the last time if things end up going that way," he told her. "I could loan you some or pay your part of the rent for a couple of months, whatever you need to buy you a little more time."

She looked at him angrily. "You're not paying my way, Noah."

"Didn't you recently give me a lecture about letting other people help you?"

"That was completely different!"

"Why? Because it was me who needed help and not you?" he asked. "You're so good at telling other people what they need, Rach, but what about you? You can't accept help from anyone. You get so mad at me for keeping you at a distance, but yet, you keep me just out of arm's reach. I think you're just as afraid to rely on anyone as I am, and the fact that you won't admit it makes you a total hypocrite."

Rachel slammed her ice cream down on the kitchen counter and jumped to her feet. "I'm not scared of anything, Noah. I just refuse to belong to you. If you pay for something, you might start thinking that you own me."

"That doesn't even sound like me." She recoiled at how calm and even his voice is. "And if you really think that way about me, Berry, then you don't know me at all."

She watched as he crossed the kitchen again to pick up his guitar and his notebook before heading out of the room. The door slammed a moment later, echoing loud in the empty loft. Rachel was left feeling somewhere between angrier than she had ever been and wanting to cry until she didn't have any tears left. Her mouth had once again worked faster than her brain and she had said things she didn't mean. It was really starting to get her in trouble.

"I got ten fingers to the sky, my back to the wall, my white flag high. Hair, lips, just like a gun, she's got silver bullets on her tongue," Rachel sang, her voice sounding lonely and forlorn as it echoed off the high acoustics of their vaulted ceiling. "He's deep under her spell. I'm screamin' out but it just won't help. I think I'm cursed. I had him first."

Rachel walked idly through the kitchen and into the living room, running her fingers along the exposed brick wall. "Oh, Adeline, have mercy. You don't wanna break my heart. Take what's mine, don't hurt me," she added, pausing at the window to look out at the city below. "Steal my money, steal my car, don't take my man. Don't take my man, I said don't take my man 'cause you know you can. Put the gun down, oh, put the gun down."

All of the anger she had felt before dissolved with her very sad version of what was usually a powerful song. She knew that she needed to find Noah and apologize. She knew that she owed as much to the other girls she'd hurt before. She knew both of those things, and yet, she couldn't find the strength to walk outside of the loft and go after any of them. Instead, she pulled her phone out of her bag and called up an old friend.

"What would you say if I just pulled a diva trip on Noah and made him angry enough to leave me alone?"

"I'd say that you're the same Rachel Berry you've always been," Quinn teased her on the other end of the phone. "I'd also say that you are probably feeling pretty terrible right about now and that you need to find a way to apologize to him. The guy's crazy about you, Rach. We've all known it for years. Whatever you did probably isn't enough to change that."

"His mom is sick."

Quinn was silent for a moment. "Oh, Puck," she exhaled sadly. "Again? The same thing?"

"The doctors seem to think so. They'll know more next week when they get the results of her tests," she explained. "I wanted to tell everyone, but you know Noah. He's keeping it together for the most part, but I can tell how much it's bothering him. I suppose I only added to his stress when he was just trying to help me in the same way that I insisted on helping him."

"Neither of you is really good at letting someone help them. The two of you spent a lot of years with a 'you against the world' mentality, even if it hasn't been like that for awhile. You can't fight him when he tries to help you, Rachel. Trust me, I know firsthand how he needs to feel like he's helping even when he really can't."

"He just told me that he was scared of the day when he would need me and I wouldn't be there. I guess I'm just as terrified about the same thing," she conceded. Spending most of her childhood with only her fathers to rely on had left her with a thick shell of self-preservation, much like the one he carried with him after his father had left. "Oh, god, I'm terrible, Quinn!"

"Go find Puck, Rachel. Just be honest with him and he'll forgive you."

Rachel hung up the phone and headed out into the cold November afternoon to find Puck. She knew exactly where he would be. It was the only other place he liked to write other than the loft. It was the same bench he'd taken her to that night when they'd talk after they left the bar. She saw him before he saw her. He was still plucking away at that guitar, stopping every now and then to write something down with the pencil perched between his lips.

She stopped short of the bench, crossing her arms behind her back sheepishly as she listened to him. "That's nice, it sounds really good," she complimented him lamely. He looked up at her funnily and just sort of nodded. "Noah, I'm so sorry."

He propped the guitar up on his knee. "I'm listening."

Rachel sat down on the bench beside him, turning slightly so that her knee was pressed against his thigh. "I completely overreacted earlier. Instead of thanking you for your generosity, I said things that I don't even mean and did an absolutely horrid job of actually explaining how I felt. I abhor the type of behavior I illustrated back at the loft, and I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me."

"Crazy Girl, it's not the first time I've been on the receiving end on one of your fits." She smiled as he tugged on the end of her hair playfully. "Why don't you try telling me again what you meant?"

"I suppose you are not the only one who excels at needing people, Noah," she relented. "I spent so much of my life without any friends or anyone besides my fathers who cared about me one way or the other. I got used to it with Finn and that ended so badly. I was afraid of finding myself in that place again."

"I'm not Finn."

"I know you're not, and I shouldn't have treated you as if you were. I know that you would never purposely make me feel like I owed you anything. More likely, it'd be something I would contrive in my head. I just don't want to complicate our relationship with an arrangement like this. I need to know that I can do it on my own. I've always been taken care of my entire life, that's where we're different. You know how to fight for yourself rather than to have someone fight for you. For me, my fathers have always given me everything. So between not trusting anyone else besides them and wanting to break free of that, I'm kind of a mess."

"You've always been a mess, Berry," he teased her. "You just gotta let me help you if you're gonna help me. We're partners in this thing, and it's not going to work unless we both recognize that."

"So we'll try?"

"And we'll try some more," he agreed. "I'm not gonna give up on you easily."

"Good," she replied before allowing him to kiss her. "And because I only know how to truly apologize in one way and that's with a song, I was hoping that you could accompany me on a piece? I think the girls are still rehearsing and I could use your help."

Rachel and Puck made their way back to NYADA so that she could finally make amends. She apologized genuinely to her professor for her behavior before telling the girls that she was sorry for what she had said. She offered to help them in any way that she could, even if she wasn't going to get to sing with them, and she was grateful when they invited her back as their fourth. They all hugged despite not really knowing each other and then, in true Rachel Berry fashion, she sang her apology song.

"Every now and then I fall. Every now and then I lose control," she sang, her eyes on the girls but her body tilted toward Noah. She was apologizing to him too with this one. "In your eyes, I see your thoughts surrounding me, and I've a little bit of thought for you."

"Cause every now and then I all fall a bit behind, every time I stare into your eyes," she wailed, her voice making full use of the auditorium. "Your thrills I find, it's not to be left behind. So I'll run, you'll hide. We know better than to stay outside."

Her eyes left the girls altogether as she gazed over at her boyfriend. He was pretty perfect with a guitar in his hand. "You're cold and awake. You said should have never stayed, but there's no better place for me. 'Cause every now and then I fall a bit behind, every time I stare into your eyes."

Lyrics credit to "Put the Gun Down" by ZZ Ward and "From Nowhere" by Dan Croll.