A/N: I like this one, even though it got more angsty than I wanted it to be. Yay! Angst! Review please? Thank you!
Title: Fleeting Moments
Author: sparklinglemonade
Rating: M
Summary: Noah Puckerman isn't a good person – he's an ass, a studly sex-shark – but when it comes to Quinn Fabray he tends to have his moments
Genre: Angst/Drama
Chapter: Fourteen
Frail
Although she's gained a fair about of baby weight, to him she still looks frail and unkempt to him – and even more so, sad.
He hates that she looks sad, so one day he says something.
"Why don't you perk up, Fabray?" he asks, "You're killing the mood." They're eating breakfast one morning when he mentions this ever so casually when he's really been planning it for a few days. It's not the sweetest thing he's ever said, he realizes, but he has no idea where she gets off saying what she says next.
"I'm…moving out," she blurts and avoids his gaze. He narrows his eyes at her, confused.
"Where are you going to go?" He wonders aloud, not processing her words fully.
"Mercedes offered me her older brothers room, and I'm going to take it. I can't live here anymore, Puck." She's crying and still won't look at him, and he's starting to get pissed.
"Why the hell not?" He stands up and kicks his chair back, "I gave you a fucking home, Quinn, and this is how you repay me? I put my ass on the line with my family and lost my best friend for you, and you just leave? You just go a month before you're supposed to have my kid? What the fuck?"
"Staying here," she sniffs, her voice calm and even, "makes me want to keep her, and I know we can't."
"We can," he interjects, angry and hurt, "you just don't want to." He's blaming her - he knows she hates when he does that because it's not totally her fault and he knows that, but it's an easy way to piss her off (which she doesn't seem to be happening right now, and that pisses him off because he can't very well be angry when she's all sad), so he does it.
"No," she says, quietly, not looking at him, "you're right, I don't. I don't want to give up my dreams, Noah, and I don't want to give up my dreams, Noah, and I don't want to give my child a shitty life with absentee parents."
"We wouldn't be absen-," he starts, but she interrupts.
"Yes," she says, "we'd be working full time to support the kid, and we'd never be around…I'm sure your mother would practically raise her, and I would never want to dump that on her."
He sighs, knowing she's right and hating it, "it doesn't matter what I think, does it?"
"Not too much," she says, even though it's nice to hear."
"Yeah," he says, "well that doesn't really make anything better, does it?"
"I guess not," she says, and he watches as she gets up from the table and disposes of her uneaten food before leaving.
He makes sure he says it loud enough so she can hear it, and so it can hurt: "I'll miss you."