"You're going to fucking eat, Santana. Now."
It had probably been most of another day since the men had last demanded a performance from them, approximately an hour since two fast food bags full of burgers and fries had been unceremoniously shoved down the staircase at them before the basement door was locked up again, too fast for them to even see which person had deposited it. Puck had since devoured three quarter pounders and a large fry, but Santana's portions remained in the bag untouched. She wouldn't even look at them; she wouldn't even let him take them out of the bag.
And it was pissing him off.
"Eat," Puck repeated, his voice louder, testy now, and still Santana didn't even look in his direction. Standing against the wall beside the bed, her back leaned into it, she kept her arms crossed over her chest, her chin stuck out in seeming defiance, her eyes narrowed until they were practically closed, and she did not turn her head in his direction. When she responded, her voice was sullen but adamant.
"I said I'm not fucking hungry, Puckerman."
"I don't care if you, Santana, are hungry or not, your nonexistent stomach is, so eat," Puck repeated, hearing his voice rise a little more, and he took a step towards her, holding out the bag and shaking it. "Food ain't gonna get any more appetizing if it's friggin' cold, so just eat it already and stop making a huge deal over a damn burger."
Still Santana wouldn't look at him, wouldn't even argue back in a reasonable manner. Jaw set, eyes fixed past Puck rather than at him, she spoke one word and one word only, as though this was all she thought necessary to get her way.
"No."
And that one word was enough to infuriate him to the max. Puck felt his face heat, the hand not holding the bag ball into a fist as he shoved the bag in her face again, not even attempting to keep his voice calm anymore, let alone lowered in volume.
"Santana, eat the damn food, what the hell is your problem? Just eat it!"
For the first time Santana responded to him directly. Her head finally turning towards him, her eyes meeting his with surprising fire in their surface, she drew herself up to her full height, her back at last straightening so she was no longer leaning into the wall.
"Why, you like your girls a little on the chunkster side and I ain't making the cut? Sorry if I don't match up to the Zizes standards, which my girth approximating that of a baby rhinoceros, but rest assured, Puck, even if I lost thirty pounds I'd still have my boobs. That's the power of implants, bought and paid for, so never fear, you're always gonna have something vaguely resembling globs of fat that you can have your wanky fantasies over. Your little wet dreams are secured for the future."
They both knew very well that the last "wet dream" Puck had had in Santana's presence hadn't been that sort of dream at all; Santana knew, because she was the one who had attempted to awaken and comfort him through it, that he'd been having nightmares, barely sleeping steadily or deeply at all as a result. She knew that, she had witnessed that mere hours ago, and yet here she was mocking him for supposedly lusting after her breasts, implying that any dreams he had would be about sexual gratification off of her. Here she was, completely glossing over what to Puck had been a very vulnerable moment he would never want spoken of aloud at all, and the anger that shot through him in response to this was so strong he didn't think for a moment about his response. He just spoke, his instinct to insult riding over any efforts at grace and civility that the last two days had forged between them.
"Gonna be pretty hard to have anything but nightmares about you if I'm gonna end up having to hump a fucking skeleton with balloons tied on."
The remark had hit hard. He could see it in the way she flinched, drawing in her breath as though he had slapped her, the quick blinking of her eyes and the stiffness coming over her features. But she didn't take much time to show any shock or hurt by it. It wasn't more than a moment or two before the steel had come back into Santana's expression, and she jutted her chin out aggressively, her eyes flashing renewed defensiveness.
"Oh, so now you don't like my body, is that it? So I'm right then? That's what this is all about, you want me to eat a burger so I'm not too scrawny for your sexual preferences?"
"Santana, what the fuck are you talking about?" Puck rejoined, although he knew very well that this was exactly what he had implied, even if it wasn't a statement he had meant, exactly. Still, he wasn't about to explain that now, or back down from whatever view of it she might get if it was going to piss her off to his satisfaction- not when she was pissing him off every bit as much right now.
"What you just fucking said, Puckerman, do you even listen to your own self talk or is that too much work for your poor, overstressed two brain cells?" Santana snapped, biting off the words so harshly that it seemed as though she were ready to bite him as well. "You're such a fucking liar. You seemed to like it well enough when you were putting it to me- AGAIN."
And there it was, hanging out between them all over again, raw and ugly and undeniably both the truth and a lie all at once. There it was again, no less difficult to cope with even in the light of the initial tenderness between them in the aftermath…always just under the surface, waiting to emerge at the first signs of conflict. Glossed over, unmentioned, but present, undeniably present, and as Puck looked at her, her face flushed with defiance, even as her fisted hands trembled and shook at her sides to betray her more vulnerable emotions as well, he had to put all his effort into simply shaking his head, then deliberately turning himself away from being able to look at her. If he didn't, he was suddenly sure, the words he would say or the actions he would take would be more than either one of them would be able to handle.
"I'm not doing this shit with you again, Santana," he managed, hearing the slightly strangled sound of his own voice and knowing that it was unlikely she would interpret the reasons behind his own difficulty speaking. "Just stop talking. Now."
But stopping herself from talking when someone else wanted her to was not exactly Santana's strong point; in fact, Puck doubted she'd ever done that in her life, if only to prove a point that she was not one to be ordered or controlled. And she certainly didn't make it a brand new happen by listening to him then.
"No, you don't get to shut this shit down when you feel like it! You start it, you're gonna play it out to the bitter end! So you don't like my body, Puck, is that what you're saying? So let me get this straight then, let's make sure I've got this really fucking clear so I know EXACTLY where I stand on everyone's standards with that, so I can just make sure I readjust myself accordingly to every given situation. I'm too fat for Cheerios, I'm too skinny for the Latina community at large, I'm too feminine to be a lesbian and too into vaginas to be straight, I'm too smart for Lima and too stupid for New York City, my boobs were too little before the implants and too fake after, and apparently, I'm too much of a "bone with boobs" for you and your shriveled baby carrot of a dick, but I'm perfect, just fucking PERFECT for pimps and johns and everyone on the paying internet porn underground. Excuse me if I have a hard time figuring out exactly which role I'm supposed to be too much or too little of when!"
Had Puck himself been in a reasonable mood at all, he would have determined easily enough that Santana was working herself to a state where both of them would only be benefited if he backed down and tried to smooth things over. But Santana's rant was only feeding into his own frustration with her, and he had no patience or thoughts of diplomacy- something that even in the calmest of times, was hardly his strong point.
"Santana, you're being insane," he informed her, crossing his arms over his chest in an unconscious mirroring of her. "Just eat the damn food already. I didn't say shit about your body so stop putting words in my mouth and start putting some fucking food."
He didn't respond to the other parts of her diatribe- about being stupid or lesbian or the "type" of their viewers. There was no response to that, especially the last part, that he could give without feeling very uncomfortable, and he didn't want to feel that Santana was in any way justifiably upset, even for reasons that had nothing to do with him at all. He was right and he knew it, in his own view, and there was no point in acknowledging even a tiny bit otherwise if Santana was gonna take that inch and run a marathon with it where he ended up again being the one dragged in the mud with it.
"Oh, so it's about control then, not my body and if it's got enough extra padding for you to get it up," Santana shot back, uncrossing her arms and starting to use them to gesture in static bursts of movement that didn't quite seem to go along with her words. "You tell me to do something and I do it, no questions asked, whether I want to or not? Sorry, NOAH, but that's only good when the cameras are rolling, you lose all fucking privileges once they're off and gone."
Puck felt his arms begin to shake with held back adrenaline, and he flexed his fists, struggling to keep them down by his side. So this was where she was going with this…again. No matter what he tried to do, no matter how he tried to help, no matter how she herself had already previously excused him, this was always what it came back to. Whatever their efforts, in the end, she couldn't let this go, they couldn't make this okay…and however he tried, she was still going to throw this in his face the second she got pissed off. She was always going to make this about him being one of the bad guys, she was never going to really trust him or give him credit…not really. She was always going to come out swinging with claws bared, no matter what he tried to do for her, and it frustrated him to the point he could hardly even think coherently in response to her, let alone speak.
And it hurt. Whether she genuinely meant what she was saying or not, it fucking hurt that the accusations she was leveling at him would even cross her mind, let alone come out her mouth.
"Don't even go there, Lopez. Not again," he managed after a few moments, his voice so tight and strained it didn't sound like it was his own. "You know I tried. We've had this fucking conversation before. You told me to do what I had to do and we'd try to make it okay, and that's exactly what we fucking did. Don't rewrite history to suit your whim 'cause you think you're gonna get fat off a fucking burger or something. You KNOW I tried. What the hell else am I supposed to do, Santana?"
"How about don't stick your dick in me?"
It was a cheap shot, completely unfair, and they both knew it. Puck knew very well why Santana was responding like she was, just as she had the time before, just as she did every time that she felt herself to be in some way humiliated or violated by Remington, his men, and by unwilling extension, Puck himself. It was her way of taking back control, of taking herself out of the helplessness and fear, the grief and hurt she felt, and focusing only on anger, whether or not it was being directed at the appropriate person. Santana's anger was justified, but not logical, and it made it no easier for Puck to be on the receiving end of it. Especially when he knew, KNEW that he had done nothing to deserve it- at least nothing that he could control or help.
He could have flared up at her then. He would have, the day before, and probably even ten minutes ago. But something about the way Santana was looking at him then, with her hair messy and tangled around her face, partly covering her eyes, with her features tensed and strained, made him unable to spit out the angry words that came to his mind. Instead a heavy tiredness came over him, and Puck found himself slumping, his eyes shifting away from her as he let out a slow exhalation, feeling his anger seeping out from his muscles almost entirely. When he looked back at her, it was only that resigned weariness that was left in him, and he could answer her with quiet but firm resignation- or was it simply decisiveness?
"Okay."
Santana blinked, clearly not having expected this response. She shifted her weight, uncrossing, then almost immediately recrossing her arms, and her tone lost some of its aggression as she spoke. "What?"
"I said okay," Puck repeated, in no less of a calm and quiet tone than he had before. He continued to watch Santana, knowing in that moment with complete sureness that he meant what he was saying to her. He had thought it last night, and now more than ever, he intended to somehow keep his word.
This wasn't happening again. Not when it would always result in this stand-off between them, not when it meant that they would never be able to fully stand together united with this in between. Not when it meant that he would have to look Santana in the eyes and see that he had hurt her, not when he would have to hate himself one more time for something he had been made to do against her. Not when he would have to feel her tears against his skin and force a touch that he knew was entirely unwanted.
This wasn't happening again. Somehow, in some way, Puck would have to figure out how to make sure of it. His promises hadn't been worth very much so far, whatever his intentions, but this one, he intended to keep.