A/N: Thank-you to everyone who has spent time reading this, adding this to your story favorites, adding this to your author alerts, and reviewing this story. I truly appreciate all of the support that I have received from you with regards to my first ever fanfiction. This chapter is especially dedicated to Sleeping to Dream about You, for all of her support.
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing in this story. Anywhere. At all.
She lay in the darkness listening to him sleep. It wasn't the first time they had fallen asleep next to each other, but it was the most important. She shifted slightly so that she could watch him sleeping.
His face was so...calm. Peaceful. As if there was an inner certainty that he had found and come to accept. When he was awake, he looked haunted, his eyes lifeless. When he slept, though, there was no trace of the agony, of the fear, of the loss that had plagued him for months. He looked as if he had been released from the terrible hold of the world for a moment and had been allowed to float free.
Her eyes swept from the small creases next to his eyes, down over his softly parted lips and to the smooth curves of his shoulders. His skin was so smooth, so soft, but it was also firm and supple. She moved down his shoulders to his guns (good God his arms were lovely) and watched his right hand twitch against the sheets. She could see only the top portion of his chest and then the gentle swell of his body was hidden by the sheets, but she knew that he wasn't wearing anything underneath the blankets and her body burned a little at the thought.
She had decided when she had first heard about sex that her first time would be special. She didn't even try to think that she would hold with the nonsense of saving herself for marriage – in this day and age, she knew she would be hard-pressed to make it out of high school a virgin. Her life had taken a different path than she had predicted, and she had spent the first two years of high school without a boyfriend, without any opportunities to defend her virginity.
She had known that she wanted to love the person that she had her first time with – if there wasn't love behind the act, at least the first time, then it wouldn't mean nearly as much. The only problem was; she was having trouble finding somebody to love in that way. Until Puck. Until Noah. Until glee and Leah had united them.
She felt as if she had found in him the part of her that she had been missing. With Noah by her side, she felt more complete, more satisfied, than she had ever felt before. She had thought that she had loved Finn when they sang together and when he had taken her bowling, but now she knew what real love felt like.
In the cemetery that night, when she had been talking to Leah, she had been trying to come up with the right words to say. She thought about everything she would want a daughter to know about her father if he had been the one to pass away, and she spilled everything out of her, laying the world at Leah's grave. She thought about everything she wanted to tell Noah, since he was the one truly listening. She tried to tell him how wonderful she thought he was, and how much she had missed him, but the words weren't enough. She knew what she needed to say, but she was scared to say it. She had been sure that those three words would be the words that would send him back over the edge, and that this time, she might lose him for good.
She had pulled in a deep breath and then exhaled slowly, building up her courage. "I think you should know, Leah, that I love your father," she began nervously. "And I'm going to try to take care of him for you, okay?" she whispered, and waited anxiously for his reaction. She was relieved when he turned to her and buried his face in her hair.
"I love you," she whispered to him, and turned her face to his. She saw the burning in his eyes, and then he closed them and whispered, "I love you, too." When he said the words back to her a glowy sort of warmth spread through her, and she wanted to kiss him, but she knew that now was not the time, nor the place.
She felt him rise from the ground and pull her up next to him. "Let's go home," she whispered, and they walked hand-in-hand back to the truck, her mind racing. She had just told Noah Puckerman that she loved him and he had said it back. There had been so much that had happened between them in the past few months that she knew that the love was real, and that neither one of them took the word or its saying lightly.
When they had begun kissing on her bed, she knew that she wanted him to be her first. That there wasn't going to be anyone as special as Noah Puckerman in her life ever again – especially not in high school, and she didn't want to just get drunk and lose it to some asshole in college. She knew that she loved him and that he honestly loved her, and would be careful with her. He would know how much it meant to her because he knew her.
When she had said the words to him, she had watched his eyes cloud for a brief moment and she was nervous that he would say no, that he would reject her. She wouldn't allow herself to think about how much it would hurt if he told her no. In true Rachel Berry style, it wasn't the only thing that she was worried about. Yes, she had researched sex and what you should do and how it should go, but she was worried that she would do something wrong, that she would ruin the experience. She worried that he didn't think that she was pretty, or attractive, or that her body wasn't the type that he wanted.
She worried about all of it at hyper-speed and then forced herself to stop when she saw the tension release from between his eyes. When he began to lean towards her, she felt excitement begin to fizz through her body, little bubbles of happiness bursting like electric jolts – and that had only been the beginning.
The way he touched her, the way he kissed her, the way he felt on top of her – the slight pressure from his body that was heavy, but not in a bad way. The feeling he put into his kisses, the sweetness he traced onto her with his mouth, the love that he presented for her with all of his actions.
When he softly said her name, drawing her mind out of the ether of his attentions, she looked into his eyes to see the love and hesitation shimmering in them.
"Noah?" she had asked him, hoping that he wasn't about to change his mind. Instead, he had slowly moved inside of her and had whispered, "I love you." She felt pain when she lost her virginity and hissed her breath out through her teeth, but at the same time she was thinking, ohmygod this feels amazing.
Nothing had ever felt so right – she felt full, complete. She began to rock against him and whispered the only words she could think of that could accurately convey how she felt. "I love you, I love you," she was whispering, and when he began to move with her and repeated her words to her, she felt her heart swell with love.
He had continued to kiss her in-between showering her with "I love you's" and he seemed as if he were drawn to her mouth, dragging kisses from her neck up to her lips. She could feel her lips swelling from all of the attention they received. He held himself gently off of her, taking care not to be lazy and smother her, and though she could tell that he was quite experienced in this area (either that or just naturally that good) she was receiving an experience unlike any other.
He had made it special. He had been gentle and loving with her; even though she could tell that he was controlling himself. At this thought, she smiled. There would be time to explore moments of lesser control at later dates. But for a first time, it had been perfect. No, there hadn't been rose petals scattered on the bed, there weren't hundreds of white tea candles lit, there wasn't any music (carefully selected of course) on the iHome, but she could not imagine having shared that experience with anyone other than Noah. No one would have fit her so perfectly and understood her so well. No one would have been as gentle and as careful as he had been.
She watched him sleep curled up onto his left side, facing her side of the bed. The entire time she had been reliving the past few hours he hadn't moved at all. He had said that he always had nightmares in the middle of the night, and she noticed that the time she usually received the silent phone calls had come and gone hours ago.
She watched him a little longer, marveling in his peaceful beauty until her eyelids got to be too heavy and she had to let them shut.
When she woke up in the morning she opened her eyes to see him gazing at her. When he registered that she was awake, his face broke into a grin and he leaned down to kiss her.
"Morning breath!" she said, but he ducked in to kiss her again. She decided that she didn't care if he didn't care, and they were eagerly kissing and pressing their bodies against each other when someone knocked on her door.
They froze, and Rachel, ever the actress, called out sleepily, "who is it?" as she tried to make as little noise as possible gathering Noah's clothes and tossing them to him. He had sat up quietly in bed and was attempting to silently dress and (she giggled) calm himself down at the same time.
"It's Daddy, sweetie. Is Noah still here?" she heard from outside the door.
"Oh! Yes," she called back, making a huge production of getting off of the bed. "We must have fallen asleep talking," she said, and then she opened her door to her father. He looked into the room warily, and Rachel could tell that he was trying to remember if she or Noah had been wearing anything different the night before. He must have decided that everything was okay, because he shrugged and asked her if she and Noah wanted breakfast.
"Sure! Let me just wake him up," she responded cheerily, and shut the door. She knew that her fathers trusted and respected Noah, but she was still their little girl. The other times that he had innocently fallen asleep on her bed, they had behaved the exact same way. It wasn't that he had gotten a girl pregnant (by now they knew the whole story behind that) but that he was a boy with hormones in general.
"Good morning," Noah smiled up at her as he "awoke."
"Good morning," she replied, smiling at him. He got off of the bed and gathered her in his arms.
"I could get used to waking up next to you every day," he said to her, and she felt the fire in her heart burn a little harder.
"I could, too," she blushed back at him.
"I've never had a better night's sleep," he said, and then his smile faded a little bit. "I didn't have the nightmare last night, for the first time since she died," he said, and she tried to read all of the emotions in his face. "It was nice, not waking up screaming, but I hope I don't stop dreaming about her all together," he said.
"You won't," she replied softly, and pulled away from him to take his hand in hers. "She'll visit you in your dreams, so that you can have adventures with her and see her – the dreams will be actual dreams, not nightmares. You'll heal," she explained as she opened the door.
Instead of responding, he squeezed her hand, and then kissed her sweetly on the mouth.
"Well! That's very interesting..." she heard her dad say, and she blushed even harder as she led Noah down the stairs to the breakfast room.
Weeks had passed since Noah had outed them to her parents, and they had been the most perfect weeks Rachel could ever remember having. They weren't always happy, as there was a lot of sadness that had been dealt to them recently, but they had each other to lean on, and each other to love.
Noah had leapt back into glee with a renewed fervor, and he and Rachel had choreographed a song for the entire glee club to perform at the end of their set at Regionals. They had drilled everyone on the routine, Noah barking orders and Rachel trying to make sure that everyone hit the right notes. Mr. Schuester watched them from the sidelines with a slight smile on his face.
They had perfected every nuance of the number, and as they closed out "Finale B" Noah pulled Rachel to him and kissed her harder than he had ever kissed her before. There was a brilliant energy that flowed through him as he got to showcase his love for her to everyone, and she loved that he was so happy.
The club regrouped backstage, everyone cheering and hurriedly changing costumes and fixing make-up streaks.
"Great job, you guys!" Mr. Schuester called out, stepping through the kids as they prepared for their final number. "Rachel, Noah?" he questioned and glanced at his watch.
"Places!" Rachel called, and everyone gathered onto the stage. Noah stood on the opposite side of the stage from her; both of them were waiting in the wings. The rest of the group was arranged in rows towards the middle of the stage behind them. The curtain lifted and the group began to sing as Artie began to wail away on the electric guitar.
As the introduction ended, Rachel stepped out onto the stage and began to sing, "I want to break free...." Across the stage, Noah stepped out from the wings and walked to her, singing back to her, "I want to break free..." They reached the center of the stage and turned towards the crowd, trading lines off and on:
I want to break free from your lies
You're so self satisfied (yeah) I don't need you
As Rachel watched him sing his line, he pushed her lightly on the shoulder and they continued to the opposite side of the stage.
I've got to break free
God knows, God knows I want to break free
They turned towards each other and pressed their palms together as they turned in a circle and Rachel was forced to think of Shakespeare as they danced and sang together:
I've fallen in love
I've fallen in love for the first time
And this time I know it's for real
I've fallen in love (yeah)
At the breath beat between the end of the "(yeah)" and the beginning of the next line, they kissed quickly and turned towards the front of the stage holding hands.
God knows, God knows I've fallen in love
The rest of the glee members began to move from their positions behind them, effortlessly executing their routine. The remaining girls and guys coupled off, twirling and pushing against each other in an I-love-him, I-love-him-not kind of way. In a nod to a group inside joke, Noah began the next verse, and traded lyrics again with Rachel as the group sang back-up.
It's strange but it's true
I can't get over the way you love me like you do
But I have to be sure
When I walk out that door
At this the pair separated, again walking to other sides of the stage. The group swelled between them, effectively blocking their path to one another as Rachel sang the first line and Noah responded.
Oh how I want to be free baby
Oh how I want to be free
Oh how I want to break free!
They reached the instrumental segment of their song and the entire group joined in with dancing, with Mike and Matt even imitating the freestyle dancers from the old Coke commercial. The group dancing effectively kept the two of them from reaching each other until the instrumental section began to wind down. The group interlaced their voices with Rachel and Noah's as they stepped back and formed a pathway in front of them. Rachel and Noah intersected at center stage and began to circle each other as they sang:
But life still goes on
I can't get used to living without, living without,
Living without you by my side
I don't want to live alone (hey)
At this, Rachel began to tug on his arm, trying to get him to look at her again while he sang:
God knows, got to make it on my own
Rachel continued to pull at him until he turned towards her and she sang to him:
So baby can't you see
I've got to break free
They pulled away from each other and then came back together in a rubber-band like motion. The group had made the decision to break from the traditional fade out ending and had Santana, Kurt, and Brittany take center stage, dancing and singing their hearts out in an ultimate finale as Rachel and Noah danced with each other in the center of the half-shell the group had formed:
I've got to break free
I want to break free (yeah)
The guitar began to fade out and the dancers and singers moved to the background as Santana and Brittany pirouetted around Kurt while he belted the final line:
I want, I want, I want, I want to break free....
The curtain closed as Brittany and Santana held their final poses around Kurt. Rachel and Noah faded to the background of the group and stared into each others eyes, not daring to move. Around them, ahead of them, in the crowd, in the chorus, and in everyone working backstage at the event she could hear applause, cheers, and whistles.
Mr. Schuester was calling everyone to attention and trying to get them together to bow for a final curtain call, but Rachel could barely hear him. She was lost in Noah's eyes, trying to tell him how proud she was of him. Of them. Of what they had accomplished. Of everything that they had gained.
The curtain rose again and when the lights and the crowd and the cheers and the energy hit her, it was all too much to control and she threw herself forward into Noah's arms. He laughed at her exuberance and held her close to him. She didn't care that they were center stage at a school event. She tilted her head up to meet his and kissed him as if she would never stop kissing him ever again.