I do not know how many of you have actually attended an opera performance. They generally last about four hours, and many of the classic operas are in a foreign language: German, Italian, Spanish, or French. In addition, many opera writers will take a basic premise that people are familiar with and put their own spin on it. This means that even if you know the original story—you might still have no idea what's going on in the opera. (This happened to me with Wagner's Parsifal.) However, the music can be incredibly beautiful and well worth reading a translation of the libretto so that you can follow along. Unless, of course, you're a self-proclaimed bad ass. Then you probably wouldn't want to do any such thing. (That's okay; we still love you, Puck!)
Defying Gravity started playing, but Kurt was sleeping so he tried to ignore it. He opened one eye and glared at the clock. Then he realized whose ring tone that was and what time it was and he sat straight up in bed. He started searching for his phone and finally found it under his bed. He glanced at the display. He'd missed five calls. His eyebrows climbed up his forehead. What the hell had they done now? He hit the speed dial for Rachel.
"Well it's about damn time," she bit out through clenched teeth.
"Geez, Rachel, I was asleep! You know, some people do that." Kurt was just a little peeved. He'd called, hadn't he?
"Look, I'm really sorry. That came out all wrong. I'm just so upset. Kurt, can I come sleep with you, tonight? He'll probably be on my damn doorstep at the crack of dawn and I really can not deal with his shit right now."
"Honey, don't you think he'll notice you sitting at the breakfast table?" Kurt was still half asleep and he had the feeling he wasn't keeping up with the conversation somehow.
"No! Finn's not the problem. It's Puckerman." Rachel growled his name into the phone. Ah. Well, Kurt could kind of see her point there. When Puck screwed up he went all out on apologies, which was fine once Rachel felt like dealing with him. She usually needed a little time to calm down, but for whatever reason Puck never seemed to take that into consideration.
"Okay. Um…how am I supposed to explain you in my bed? My dad will probably flip out. Mom won't be thrilled either." Rachel sighed heavily in his ear.
"Never mind. I'll call Santana."
"Now wait just a minute! I didn't say no, I just said I'm going to catch a lot of flack for this, and you had better help explain it all to the parents."
"Fine. I'll be there in a few." And then she hung up on him. He started muttering under his breath. Seriously, there were days he wanted to smack her. He loved her, but he still felt a deep, overwhelming desire to bitch slap her.
She was true to her word. In about five minutes, his bedroom window slid open and she slipped in with an overnight bag. His eyes widened.
"It's like you're a spy or something. Good evening, Miss Peel," Kurt waved her into the room. She giggled at him.
"Don't be silly. It just seemed easier than pissing off your mom and dad."
"What about your dads?" Rachel shrugged.
"Actually, they knew I was extremely upset and I told them that if I could get a hold of you and you said yes, I was going to sleep with you tonight."
"So Rachel, what the hell happened?"
Rachel stalked up and down his small room waving her hands and telling him in excruciating detail what had happened. Kurt sat there with his jaw open. Puck was an idiot. If he had really done what she was freaking out about, he would be lucky if she forgave him in a month. Maybe two. She was in full diva fury, but she stopped at one point to give him a sweet, adoring smile.
"Thank you so much, Kurt, for explaining the plot to Finn. That was such a sweet thing to do. He was trying so hard to understand everything that was going on. Unlike some people," she muttered under her breath. That started another tirade. Kurt let her get it all out, and eventually she wound completely down.
"Tired, sweetie?" Kurt thought she looked exhausted. She nodded and crawled into bed with him. She cuddled up against him and was asleep within minutes. Kurt felt himself drifting off as well.
Sunday morning dawned bright and clear at the Hummel-Hudson home. Carole was already at the hospital—she had to work early shifts all this week. Finn was still sleeping, until his phone started ringing. God, couldn't people let him sleep on the weekend? He started groping for the phone and found it under a pillow.
"Hullo," he muttered into the phone.
"Dude, she's not home."
"What?"
"Rachel. She's not home. Her dads told me she left last night. She's not there is she?"
"What? No! She's not here! My parents would flip the fuck out. Geez, Puck are you thinking at all?"
"Well, Santana says she's not at her house. I thought maybe she'd come talk to Kurt or something." Puck sounded really unhappy. Finn couldn't really blame him. Both of them hated it when Rachel was mad at them.
"Well, let me ask Kurt if he's talked to her, okay?" Finn got up and walked down the hall. He rapped on Kurt's door. "Hey Kurt? Have you talked to Rachel since last night?"
"Uh…no…no I haven't!" Kurt's voice sounded kind of strained. Finn cocked his head at the door. That was really weird. Rachel always called Kurt. She talked to Kurt almost more than she did to either Puck or Finn.
"Um…okay. Well, if you hear from her please tell her to call me."
"Uh…sure…I'll pass it on."
"Thanks, Kurt." Finn started talking to Puck on his phone.
"He hasn't heard from her, dude. I don't know. Why don't you call Mercedes?"
Rachel sat on Kurt's bed and listened to Finn talking into his phone on the way back to his room. Kurt was glaring at her from where he stood by the door.
"I do not like lying to Finn." Kurt's tone was irritated. Rachel gave him her very best sad face with her huge chocolate eyes. Kurt snorted at her. "That does not work on me, missy."
"Fine. I'm leaving. I should be able to avoid him for the rest of the day. I probably should have stayed at Santana's last night. It wasn't fair to pull you into this." Rachel stood and started gathering her things. Kurt sighed.
"Rachel, I really do adore you. You know that, right?"
"Yes. I do. I also know I can be a little too much at times."
"Just a bit." Kurt smiled at her fondly.
Rachel took a quick shower, changed, and snuck back out the window. Kurt shook his head. She was amazing. Most of the time, people thought they knew all about Rachel Berry. If you asked your average person about her they'd go on and on about how she was a drama queen (okay, maybe a bit), self-centered, Broadway obsessed, career focused, authority Nazi. Those people never really saw the real Rachel Berry. She wasn't obsessed with Broadway, she just talked about it—which was more than anyone else at WMHS ever did. She was determined to have a career on Broadway someday, but that was better than working at the Burger Barn for the rest of her life, right? However, Rachel didn't allow her love of Broadway or her plans for a career completely rule her high school life. She tried to have a balanced life and enjoy herself now, while she could. She knew the future would hold a lot of sacrifices if she really did want to make it big. Besides, when she talked on and on about nothing but going to New York it annoyed most people. And they weren't shy about telling her to stick a sock in it. As far as authority Nazi…that was more due to the fact that Rachel worried about relinquishing control to other rather than some sort of lust for power. Rachel didn't trust a lot of people because she'd been hurt one too many times. If she gave up control, if she trusted others…they might hurt her.
However, the thing that most people never really understood was that Rachel was so much more than all of that. She was a complex person with all kinds of thoughts, feelings, dreams and ideas. Maybe that was the problem with high school. Everyone wanted you to be two-dimensional…easy to pigeon-hole, easy to label, easy to ignore. Kurt knew all about that. A lot of people figured they knew everything just because he was "the gay kid". A lot of people were dead wrong. Rachel Berry was none of those things. Maybe, Kurt mused to himself that was why so many people had a problem with Rachel— because they couldn't just label her and put her in a slot.
*glee*
Rachel managed to elude Puck by driving to the mall and hanging out. Puck really hated the mall with a deep passion. He thought it was stupid and trite and fed into the cult of mass consumption and America's obsession with materialism. He didn't put it quite that way, but Rachel knew what he meant. She couldn't help but think about Puck all day long. Today was his day. The one day of the week (well…maybe Friday, too) when Puck was himself. When he was Noah. When he stopped hiding behind the façade he'd created for himself as a coping mechanism. He was actually very intelligent—he was just afraid to act intelligently at school because that was like a death sentence. She loved talking to him about all kinds of different things: politics, news, society, anything. His perspective was always unique, and always interesting. He loved music and glee because it let him express himself in ways he just couldn't in the halls of McKinley.
A group of punk wannabes made Rachel hide a grin. Puck also had a bad boy side, but unlike the wannabes—he really was badass. It wasn't his choice really; his home life had been less than desirable when he was a kid. She didn't blame him for becoming tough because he never had control over his life. Most people don't realize it, but sometimes Middle School can be worse than High School. That's when she'd become friends with Puck and Finn. They were the three musketeers. All three of them had unusual/broken homes or "alternative families". Rachel had two parents, but most of Lima wasn't comfortable with the fact that they were both men. Puck and Finn both had single mothers, although their circumstances were very different. They'd stuck together through thick and thin. They'd protected Rachel from some of the gangs of girls who made it their life's goal to torture anyone who didn't conform to their preconceived sense of what was acceptable. It might have been then that she fell a little bit in love with both of them. At the time, she hadn't understood what she felt or what it meant. It was only years later that she realized how special and important they'd become to her.
God, she missed him. Noah. It was Sunday, and she should be with him right now. She felt a pang. That just made her angry again. How could he completely ignore her like that? Did he respect her at all? Did he have any regard for her at all? (She knew the answer to all of those questions was yes, he did. She knew Puck totally adored her, but she really wanted to be angry at him and she ignored that annoying little voice in her head.) Rachel's phone had been ringing off the hook. She answered texts from everyone except Puck and Finn. Puck's she ignored. She checked Finn's to make sure Puck wasn't flipping out too much. She knew Finn really cared about Puck and would hang out with him to make sure he was okay. She supposed that might be a bonus of having two boyfriends. They could keep each other company when she refused to speak to one of them.
Rach? R u mad at me 2? U won't answer any of my txts.
Finn was not playing fair now. She frowned at her phone and texted Kurt.
Will you tell Finn I'm not mad at him? And I'm not stupid, either.
There. That way they would know she knew they were together. Silly boys, tricks are for girls, she thought to herself with a smirk.
*glee*
Monday morning brought Rachel a locker filled with roses. There was no card, but she knew who they were from. Everyone knew who they were from. The gossip mills were hard at work and everybody already knew that Puck was in trouble. Finn wasn't at her locker, but she didn't expect him to be. It wasn't exactly bros before hos, but Puck and Finn had a fairly complex system that they had worked out between them. If one of them was in trouble, the other did not rub it in. Unless of course, whatever the person had done was so douche-y, you deserved to have it rubbed in. (Neither boy had ever done anything that rude, but they had a clause just in case.) That meant you didn't go hang out at Rachel's locker and kiss her and talk to her and have her bat those chocolate eyes at you and coo at you when the other guy was being ignored. Rachel actually respected that. She liked the fact that her boys respected each other enough and cared about each other's feelings enough to not deliberately hurt one another or create hard feelings.
She walked to first period alone and sat with Mercedes as usual. Mercedes was trying to text as fast as humanely possible before the bell rang and class officially started. She glanced at Rachel and flashed her a smile.
"Hey, girl. How come you didn't come see me Sunday?"
"Did anybody show up on your doorstep Sunday?"
"Yeah. Puck came looking for you. Did you two fight or something?"
"Oh please. Are you trying to tell me Kurt didn't call you the second I left his house on Sunday morning?"
"Wait, you were at Kurt's Sunday morning?" Mercedes eyes got big and she had paused midtext. Oops.
"Yeah, but I made him tell Finn he hadn't heard from me so you can't say anything!" Crap. Crapcrapcrap. Mercedes nodded.
"Okay, Rachel. I won't say anything. Calm down, you look like you're going to hyperventilate."
*glee*
Puck was miserable. He hated it when Rachel was mad at him. He hated it even more when she ignored him. He knew she just needed time and space to calm down. He knew she loved him and didn't want to lose her temper and say something she'd regret later, but knowing all that didn't make the ache inside go away. When Puck was miserable, he ended up taking it out on innocent parties. He may or may not have made some freshmen wet themselves by growling at them. Finn punched him in the shoulder and gave him a look. Puck knew what he meant. Just because his life sucked didn't mean he needed to terrorize freshmen. Too bad it was only Monday. He could really use fight club right about now.
"Well…the roses didn't work. We know that just kind of softened her up. What should I do next?" Finn shrugged.
"I don't know. You're usually really good at this stuff. What's wrong?"
"Dude, she is really, really mad." Finn just looked at him. "Okay, maybe I should have known that would set her off. I don't know…it's just after the first two or three hours of them screeching in Russian or whatever, I got bored."
"It's hard to follow," Finn agreed. "But, dude, she sits through football with us and never complains. She even asks us questions about what's going on. She does try."
Puck sighed. Why did Finn have to be right? Rachel did sit through football with the boys. College games on Saturdays with Finn and pro games on Sundays with Puck. He grinned as he thought about her trying to pay attention for their sake.
"Noah, did that man just say the team is using a nipple defense?" Rachel sounded slightly scandalized.
"No, baby, nickel defense. They're using a nickel defense. It means there are five guys involved in the play." Rachel nodded seriously and then turned back to the screen. Puck hugged her to his side and kissed the top of her head. She was so cute.
Puck sighed again. Damn it. Finn looked at him. He really hated to see Puck miserable. Everything just worked better when the three of them were all okay with each other. What would make Rachel forgive him?
"What about a song?" Finn suggested. Puck thought about that. Rachel really could not resist stuff like that. She ate it up. You would think that that sort of thing would get old after awhile, but not to her.
"It would have to be a really good one," Puck said slowly.
"And it would have to show how sorry you are," added Finn. Puck thought for a minute.
"What about Buckcherry's Sorry?" Finn eyes widened and then he grinned at Puck. They fist bumped.
"Dude." And Puck knew what he meant. It was going to be epic. They practiced for a couple days to make sure Puck could hit all the notes. The thing with Rachel was that if you were going to sing to her—it had to be perfect. Some crappy half-ass attempt would not cut it.
On Wednesday, it was easy to convince Mr. Schue to let Puck sing. He didn't do that many solos and Mr. Schue was all about letting everyone have a chance to express themselves. Puck picked up his guitar and Finn backed him up on drums. The jazz band helped too, but he felt better knowing Finn was there. He hated exposing his feelings in front of everybody. He felt that what the three of them had together, whatever the hell it was, was special…private. It was nobody else's damn business.
He took a couple deep breaths and then turned around and started to sing. He looked right at Rachel, who was giving him her full attention.
Oh I had a lot to say was thinking on my time away Cause everything inside it never comes out right I'm sorry I'm bad,
I missed you and things weren't the same
And when I see you cry it makes me want to die
I'm sorry you're blue,
I'm sorry about all things I said to you
And I know I can't take it back
I love how you kiss,
I love all your sounds,
and baby the way you make my world go round This time I think I'm to blame it's harder to get through the days Cause everything inside it never comes out right I'm sorry I'm bad,
And I just wanted to say I'm sorry:
You get older and blame turns to shame
And when I see you cry it makes me want to die
I'm sorry you're blue,
I'm sorry about all things I said to you
And I know I can't take it back
I love how you kiss,
I love all your sounds,
and baby the way you make my world go round Every single day I think about how we came all this way I'm sorry I'm bad,
And I just wanted to say I'm sorry:
The sleepless nights and the tears you cried it's never too late to make it right
Oh yeah sorry!
I'm sorry you're blue,
I'm sorry about all things I said to you
And I know I can't take it back
I love how you kiss,
I love all your sounds,
and baby the way you make my world go round
And I just wanted to say I'm sorry.
Rachel watched him with those beautiful eyes. Everyone in glee was watching, too. They had all noticed the tension, and everyone had heard that Puck was in trouble. The song he had just performed was that of a lover. He wondered if they were wondering about that. Fuck it. He took another breath and walked over to Rachel. He held out his hand to her.
"Forgive me?" She placed her tiny hand in his and her chocolate eyes narrowed and glinted at him.
"Not quite yet, but you're getting there." She informed him with a slight sniff. He almost whooped. She was talking to him again. Thank god. He really could not stand it when she ignored him. He knew it was just her trying to calm down and not kill him, but it really sucked. He sat down next to her and Finn came and sat on the other side. They sat through the rest of glee, but all he could really focus on was that his girl was talking to him again. He couldn't have told you if Mr. Schue danced buck naked in the classroom.
*glee*
That Sunday, Puck took Rachel to a matinee performance of a modern dance troupe. He gritted his teeth and watched the whole damn thing with her. He'd called ahead to make sure it was less than two hours because he figured that was his limit. Rachel was thrilled because it was spontaneous and she knew Puck was trying to show her that he did care about the things she liked. That was her Noah. She held his hand through out the performance and occasionally stroked his arm. He watched her watching the performance. He wasn't sure how she could focus every fiber of her being on something, but he knew it was one of the things he loved about her.
When it was over, they both clapped appreciatively, but for vastly different reasons. Rachel had enjoyed the performance. Puck was eternally grateful it was done and he could leave. Rachel turned to him with those incredible eyes of hers. They were shining and she was looking at him in that special way. I love you. That's what those eyes were saying to him.He could feel himself melting inside. It was unnerving that she could just do that to a dude. There should be laws. She bit her lower lip and then placed her hand on his. Seriously, somewhere there should be law makers making laws against this stuff.
"Thank you, Noah."
"Anything for you, shorty."
A/N: Now if there are those of you who feel Rachel has not been Diva enough, please try to contain yourselves. I'm sure if we give her enough room she'll work herself up to Diva tantrum. However, if I had two gorgeous boys waiting on me hand and foot I think I'd find it difficult to be cranky. I appreciate all of you who have given kind words, story alerts (and my personal favorite), favorite story selections. It makes me all giddy and light headed. You should know that it's your interest that keeps me updating. You guys inspire me and some junk. XD